Family Matters Loose Ends
by TaraLi
Summary: Kinsfire's story Family Matters ended, but perhaps there were some loose ends? After all, what other bonds might have been snapped by the BondSevering Curse? Sequel by permission of Kinsfire.
1. Chapter 1

Family Matters - Loose Ends

Chapter One

_For starters, let me make the appropriate disclaimer: Not mine, JKR's. Secondly, I must admit that this is not just a fanfic, but a fanfic of a fanfic - namely, Kinsfire's Family Matters, which can be found at FanFicAuthors Net. Please look it up - it's a wonderful story, with lots of room to play in! Kinsfire has in fact looked over the notes for this story, and given his approval of my writing it. The primary inspiration came one day while reading it with the realization that Family Matters is not particularly incompatible with the concepts introduced in Half-Blood Prince. The conversation between Slughorn and Riddle is taken verbatim from HBP._

_And now, on with the show!_

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Graduation from Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts had passed three weeks ago, and Minister of Magic The Honorable Harry Potter, Order of Merlin First Class, Honorary Member of the Defense Against The Dark Arts League, and so forth, was finally settling down to full-time occupation of his office in the Ministry building. Life was proceeding incredibly well - four children already, one pair of twins by his incredibly beautiful and intelligent wife, the other pair of twins by his mother-in-law were a blessing passed on to the couple who had born and raised his wife. Even a small miracle had occurred, and his godfather had returned from beyond the Veil some six months ago, and he was temporarily living with Harry's ex-werewolf Uncle Moony, and Moony's new wife, the Don't-Call-Me-Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin.

Everything seemed to be going well in the Wizarding world. There were minor annoyances, such as the pureblood resistance to some of the reforms that Harry was pushing through, as well as the changes to the Hogwarts curriculum regarding Muggle Studies for Wizards, and Wizard Studies for Muggle-Born. Harry wasn't worried about that, though. Hermione and Helen had gotten together and done some serious research, and proven that if the purebloods didn't change, they would no longer be an issue at all in another three to five generations, except as the last few died in the long-term care wards at St. Mungos. Discussions were already under way with the Goblin Representative to the Ministry about the potential economic disruption as those final families, which tended to have had the concentrated accumulations of wealth, finally died off without issue. The current idea, held a very close secret, was to keep track of cadet branches of the families that might be disinherited due to marrying out of the pure blood, such as the Tonks, and splitting the family fortunes between them. Nothing was completely settled yet, but there was time. Many of the pureblood families were already wiped out from having been Death Eaters, but there were still enough left that they had been able to make legal claims on the rest. The wealth from those was even more concentrated now, and much of that wealth was being used to put pressure on Harry to vote in their approved manner, but Harry wasn't budging, and he had the magical power to make sure they didn't push too hard.

Harry's secretary poked her head into his office. "Minister, the Dogfather is calling in the floo. Should I transfer his floo connection in here?"

"Certainly, Violet! Oh, and let your sister Lavender know I may be a bit late for my fitting for my new robes." Harry leaned back, relaxing, as his godfather's head poked into his fireplace.

"You know, Sirius, that just about everyone is calling you the Dogfather now. Next think I know, I'm going to find out you've killed some horse animagus, while he was transformed, and left his head in his wife's bed."

Sirius laughed. "I'm the Dogfather - that means I'm the opposite of the Godfather! I do _good_ things for people! As it happens, though, I was calling to see if I could recruit you and your crew for some help this weekend. I'm thinking about selling 12 Grimmauld Place, since most everyone has bad memories of it, and I was wondering if I could get your crew, and the Weasley crew, to help me clean it out. If you need a bribe, tell Hermione she gets any books we find that we don't have to destroy. I'm going to call Molly next."

Harry laughed back at him. "Sure, that sounds like a good idea. I'll get ahold of Hermione, Doug and Helen and see what's on the schedule for this weekend. I don't know of anything, but I'll get back to you tomorrow about it.

Later that evening, Harry apparated into the foyer of the home he and Hermione had moved into. "Evening, love! What am I making for dinner tonight?" The previous summer, it had become well established that Hermione would do the shopping, and planning of meals, while Harry would cook them. A certain resemblance to Tonks had become apparent when Hermione tried to do the cooking. Despite a couple of weeks trying, and a rather large bookbag of books on the subject, Hermione had really not gotten any better, and they'd finally agreed that this was probably one of those things that couldn't be learned from books, and why didn't Harry just do it, since he seemed to be pretty good at it. Since Hermione knew Harry had long days at the Ministry, she made sure to select meals that wouldn't take long to prepare, nor did they take long to clean up, since she still felt guilty taking advantage of house elf labor, even though Dobby and Winky had spent a long weekend explaining how house elves felt and ran their culture. Dobby had finally brow-beat her into at least letting them take care of doing the dishes and laundry, and general clean-up. Harry just enjoyed the cooking too much to let them do it.

Over dinner, they discussed their day. Hermione was still looking at job offers coming in from all over the Wizarding world. The plans for Hermione to take over from Griselda Marchbanks when she retired had not been made public, so that the announcement would have maximum effect. Neither of them could decide if the offers from PlayWizard were funnier than the offers from various Quidditch teams, considering how well Hermione could actually fly on a broom. Finally, Harry remembered Sirius' floo-call from earlier.

"Do we have anything on for this weekend? Sirius called earlier, and he's considering selling the old headquarters, and wants some help cleaning it out. He asked me if I'd ask you, and your parents, if they want to help."

"Sure, we can do that. Sounds like fun. Why don't you go call Mom & Dad, and see if they want to come?"

"I'll go do that. And to think, I didn't even have to use his offer of a bribe!"

"What did he offer for a bribe?"

"Any books they find, that don't have to be destroyed, you can keep."

"Then we can just tell him that you did have to bribe me!" They shared a laugh while Harry went off to call Doug and Helen.

Doug and Helen quickly agreed to join everybody on the weekend expedition to the bowels of Black Manor. It was to be their first experience exploring an ancient Wizarding family home, and nobody was certain what would be found. With some 30 rooms to search thoroughly for the first time, in addition to another 30 that nobody had bothered to enter, it was expected they would find some interesting things.

The next morning, in between meetings with the Bulgarian Minister of Magic, and the president of the World Dragon Conservation Foundation, Harry found a couple of minutes to floo Sirius and let him know that the four of them would be there bright and early Saturday morning at 8am. Sirius in return let him know that the Weasley Brigade would be reporting for duty as well. Dobby and Winky were initially somewhat put out, until it was explained to them that it wasn't really cleaning up, as much as sorting out what was to be thrown away, from what was to be kept, or to be sold, and that the house elves would be kept quite busy enough vanishing trashed items, and keeping everyone supplied with snacks and drinks for refreshment, as well as watching over the children. They seemed to find that to be a most enjoyable day for them, having to run from place to place and to constantly be making new things.

The rest of the week went smoothly. Harry only had a dozen howlers intercepted by the Ministry mail wards, though careful note was made of what they were complaining about, so a proper investigation of the situation could be made. Another two dozen of his messages were offers of marriage, to which he had a standard form-reply made very politely informing them that he was quite happily married as it was. An announcement in the Daily Prophet shortly after he had defeated Voldemort that any mail with improper proposals and pictures would be turned over to the Aurors for investigation of charges of attempted solicitation of a minor, and that Harry didn't care if the Aurors shared the pictures among themselves, mostly stopped that kind of mail. It did, however, result in a few Aurors showing up one day with really big smiles, after "investigative visits" had been made to a "random" sample of some of the witches.

Saturday morning arrived, and everyone met up outside of 12 Grimmauld Place. A quick discussion led to the decision to leave the Fidelius charm up for the time being, so they wouldn't disturb the neighbors. Sirius walked up the sidewalk, threw open the doors, and invited them all inside with the statement "Welcome to the unmaking of my hell!".

Their first task was immediately made obvious, when the portrait of Sirius's mother started her normal screeching rant. Hermione had been looking forward to this day, though, and had come up with a plan. Taking very careful aim, she vanished the paint on the wall behind the painting. Everyone but her was amazed to see the portrait hit the floor. "Well, it was obvious, once I thought about it. The sticking charm held her to the paint, the paint held onto the wall. If the paint is gone, so is she. In fact, there's been so many layers of paint on this wall since it was built, I don't think we'll even need to paint it!" Sure enough, no damage was visible to the wall, and so everyone felt happy with the results. Except of course, Mrs. Black. Sirius looked sternly at his mother's image. "Now, you old harridan! You're going into the Black Family Vault, only to be brought out to punish really bad children by making them have to listen to your screeching voice! You sound worse than nails on a chalkboard!" Harry looked at Sirius. "Do you really want to do that to the other poor paintings in that vault? I would hate to have to bring you up on charges of abusive use of Dark Magic - and she qualifies as dark magic if I've ever seen it!" Sirius decided he was right. "OK, everyone. Let's step back outside, I'll throw her up in the air, and everyone hit her with your best shot!" As quick as that, a dozen _incendios_ hit her, and she flashed into ashes gently wafting away on the winds. Once back inside, Sirius described the basic idea of what all he wanted to keep out of the house, and what he felt like should be destroyed. He handed out a bunch of small wands to everyone with a charm on them. "These are Dark-o-meters. Touch them to any item, and the darker it is, the higher it will register. As it happens, any light items will indicate a negative number, but I really doubt we'll find any of those in here. Most everyone should be able to handle anything that rates a one or two. Just get Dobby or Winky to vanish them unless they're a book or something else somewhat special. Don't be afraid to ask if you can't decide.. Books should go to Hermione, of course. Anything from 3-7, ask Harry, Remus, or I to take a look at and take care of. Do not try to destroy it yourself. Anything 8 or higher, and we'll see about calling in a team from the Department of Mysteries. They may decide to take it in for study, or transport it somewhere else for destruction, or simply destroy it here. We'll let them decide. Harry probably has the power needed to destroy them safely, but he doesn't really have the experience. Be careful - this house may well bite you if you aren't!"

The day started well, with a number of interesting items found. Even a couple of items that registered as low-level light items were found. Soon, everyone had fallen into a rhythm of putting things into various piles and occasionally calling Dobby or Winky for refreshments, or to vanish a pile that was starting to get a bit large. Occasionally, Remus or Sirius would be asked to get rid of something that registered a bit high on the dark-o-meters.

Fred and George decided to start at the top of the house, in the attic. Bill and Charlie started at the floor under that. Molly, Ginny, and Arthur elected to start in the subbasement. Remus and Tonks picked a floor, as did Ron and Sirius. At one point, Ron asked Dobby to get Bill to check on something for him. As it turned out, Ron had found a moderately valuable Goblin artifact, the return of which resulted in an argument. The Goblin's first offer was to deposit it in Sirius's vault, as he was the home owner. Sirius, though, felt it should go in Ron's vault, as he was the one to recognize that it wasn't just a piece of junk. Ron had the normal Weasley aversion to what he felt was un-earned income, since it was just sitting there, waiting to be picked up. Bill was caught in the middle somewhat, as a Weasley family member, an employee of Gringotts, and as translator. Finally it was settled that Ron would take it, if Bill had to beat it into his bloody head!

Harry and Hermione had started, as everyone expected, in the Black Family Library. The majority of the tomes registered a perfectly neutral 0, with only a few going as high as 1.3. Finally, one was found that registered a 7. Hermione whimpered as Harry set it out in the middle of the room, getting ready to destroy it. "Can't we just copy the information, even if we have to destroy this copy, love?" She asked.

"No, love. The information itself is pretty dark. It's not this particular copy that is dark. Even the restricted section in the Hogwarts library doesn't have anything that would register over 4. Professor Dumbledore might be able to handle this one, but I doubt he would want to..." Harry's comment was cut off as a scream echoed through the house.

Everyone took off downstairs as fast as they could, taking the stairs two and three at a time. They found the source of the screams in one corner of the subbasement, huddled in a corner, lashing out at anyone trying to get near. Ginny was screaming and crying "He's back, he's back! Get it off of me!" Her convulsions were getting worse, rapidly.

Looking closely with his talent for spotting the snitch, Harry saw that Ginny was wearing a locket that she hadn't been wearing before. Reaching out with his wandless magic, he lifted it off of her neck, and laid it out on the floor. A quick touch with a dark-o-meter showed it registered a solid 9.4

Fred looked closely at the locket. "Isn't that that locket we found last summer, that nobody could open? I know it disappeared - where did Ginny find it?"

George was poking around. "I think she found it in here, behind the boiler. It looks like Kreacher set up a cache of things here. We'll probably find a lot of the worst stuff here, in fact. Where did Kreacher go, anyway?"

Remus laughed a somewhat nasty laugh. "Kreacher found his way into Buckbeak's room, and didn't find his way back out in time. Apparently he didn't know you have to show a hippogriff respect before you get near it."

Sirius piped up. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. Nasty little bugger."

"Dobby!" Harry's voice rang out.

POP! came from the corner, as Dobby appeared. "Yes, Master Minister Harry Potter The Greatest Wizard Ever?"

"Dobby, please go and find Professor Dumbledore. Tell him we have a rather nasty relic here that somehow relates to Tom Riddle."

"Dobby goes!" The pop sounded once more.

"Tonks, would you go escort the Professor down here when he arrives?"

"Sure, Harry. I'm sure he'll be here pretty quickly."

Sure enough, within five minutes, an old man wearing chartreuse and lavender robes with flaming pink unicorns cavorting across its folds was walking up the sidewalk towards the entrance to Black Manor. "Ahh, my dear Nymp..."

A silencing spell hit him. "I told you not to call me that name! Now, let's get you down into the sub-basement, where you can check out this thing. Harry thinks it has something to do with Voldemort, and from what Ginny was shouting while she had it on, I suspect he's right."

Together, they descended into the depths of the building. When they got into the room with everyone else, Tonks released the silencing spell she had put on the old geezer.

"Professor, if you would?" Harry said.

Dumbledore looked closely at the locket, without touching it. Remus asked "Is that the Slytherin Family crest on the locket, Professor?"

"It certainly appears to be. Let me test a few things out here."

Dumbledore's wand came out of a pocket, and he started casting a rather large number of spells. "Your dark-o-meters certainly weren't lying. This is an incredibly dark artifact. It appears to be some kind of soul magic. The locket itself is extremely old; in fact, it appears to be old enough to actually have belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself. However, the dark enchantment on it is quite a bit newer, only about 40 or 50 years old. I wonder..." Dumbledore appeared to descend into deep thought.

Getting out a handkerchief, he carefully reached over and picked up the locket, wrapping it up. "Let's go upstairs, get something to eat, and drink, and we'll cover what we know. I may have a suspicion, and this could answer some questions I've long had about what happened when your parents died, Harry."

Gathering around the kitchen table, they all looked closely at the heavy gold locket. The silver snake, twined in a S, had glittering emerald eyes, and it lay on a field of green enamel. Dumbledore reached over to touch it carefully. "You say you all handled it back before Voldemort was destroyed?"

"Yessir. We all held it, tried to open it, but nobody could. We were going to mention it later, but things got busy, and it disappeared. We all figured either Kreacher or Mundungus had stolen it. We didn't get an evil aura from it at that time."

"Now, Miss Weasley, could you tell me what happened this time?"

"It was kind of like in my first year, Professor, when I had the diary, after it had really gotten into my mind. It kind of talked to me, started trying to rifle through my memories about Voldemort, and the Chamber of Secrets, and everything. It felt just like the diary, though, like it was the same person! It felt like Tom!"

"I believe you, Miss Weasley. In fact, during my research about the diary, and what kind of enchantments might have been on it, I came across more mentions of something I had only heard about a long time ago. Many years ago, a Dark Lord discovered something truly evil. He learned how to split his soul, so that he could put part of it in an object, and stay tied to this world, after death. It worked, to a point. Once the person's body is destroyed, they're left in a ghost-like state, only able to do things by possessing another body. But such possession always causes a strain on the body, destroying it.

"Your first year, Harry, Professor Quirrell, as we discovered, was possessed by Voldemort in that state. However, other things could have done the same thing, so my mind did not automatically leap to the possibility of a horcrux, as these things are called. Then your second year, and you destroyed the diary. At that time, the thought of a horcrux did cross my mind, but the signs that initially led me to think that Voldemort did not die with your parents in Godric's Hollow were still there. I then decided that it couldn't have been a horcrux, and kept on researching other possibilities.

"However, I am coming to the conclusion that I may have underestimated what Voldemort could do. I'm starting to wonder if Voldemort perhaps split his soul into several parts, and placed them into more than one horcrux container. If he did, then ... but too, all of the signs are that Voldemort is gone. I don't know what might have happened to send Voldemort away, but leave these pieces of his soul behind."

Harry spoke up. "What about when I cast the bond-splitting curse on Voldemort, Professor? It split the connection with his body, and Snape's casting it on me had already split my connection to him. Is it possible it also split the connection he had with his horcruxes?"

Hermione spoke up now. "That's a possibility. We'll need to research it. We'll also have to research everything we can to find out how many horcruxes Voldemort might have made, and what he might have done with them. We need to find out if there is any way to detect them specifically, and with luck, some way to find them long-range. We need to find out how to safely destroy them. There's a lot of power tied up in a soul; we don't need to be causing explosions when we destroy one. I think, Harry, the only way you survived destroying the diary was because much of the soul-piece was already out, and much of the energy went into returning Ginny's life-force to her body."

Ron's turn came. "So, what do we do now? Do we try to destroy this one now? Save it for research? It's probably a good thing that we didn't take the Fidelius charm down when we started today."

"Indeed, Mr. Weasley. I know this is an imposition, Sirius, but could I ask that we continue to use this house for a little while longer until we get this situation with the horcruxes resolved?"

"Of course, Professor Dumbledore. I don't need to sell this house particularly, I just thought I would unload it and get rid of the memories. But you're right. We're going to need this house. We need to find out how that horcrux came to rest here, for starters, I think."

"And that is a very good question we all forgot to ask. I'm sure Voldemort didn't just leave these around where they might get stolen. We know Malfoy was responsible for the diary ending up in Miss Weasley's hands."

"Professor," Harry asked, "perhaps we could adjourn to my office in the Ministry? I think we need to send a request to the Unspeakables for any information they might have on horcruxes, and I'll have better access to Ministry resources. Because I have the frightening thought of what might happen if there's another one of these, and it does manage to take someone over and completely re-materialize its body? We could be looking at a new Voldemort, and perhaps one that the Prophecy about me no longer applies to. A good point, that - we need to get a survey of Prophecies, see if there are any about this, as well as get some analysts on whether or not the Prophecy still applies."

The group quickly traveled via floo to the Minister's Office. Once there, Harry rapidly wrote out a request to the Unspeakables for any information they had about horcruxes, Tom Riddle's early life, and anything that might relate. Tapping the parchment with his wand, the parchment started flashing red, and flew off out the door.

"OK, Ginny, can you remember anything from what you saw or felt while you were wearing the locket?"

"Just flashes. He seemed a little older than he was in the diary. I remember him killing someone, and the feeling of joy it gave him - I think it might have been the first time he killed someone, and he did it with his fists. I remember a bit about a talk with a professor - hey! I remember he mentioned horcruxes in that talk! That was about the time you took the locket off of me, though."

"You didn't recognize the Professor, Ginny? Any clue what class it might have been that he taught?" Harry took over the questioning.

"No, no clues. He was too focused on the Professor to really see anything. I wish there was a way to show all of you his face. I'm sure Professor Dumbledore would recognize him."

"Perhaps you could put her memory in a Pensive, Professor? I have mine right here."

"If Miss Weasley would allow it, that would be an excellent idea, Minister Potter. Miss Weasley, this is perfectly safe, but it's a way we actually could all see what you are talking about. If you will let me, I'll ask you to pull that memory to the forefront of your mind, and then I'll extract it with my wand. Minister Potter has seen me do this many times, and I've even done it a couple of times with him."

"Sure, Headmaster, that would be great!"

Ginny concentrated for a moment, then said "Go ahead. I'm ready." Dumbledore put his wand to her temple, and pulled the silvery strand of memory free, before releasing it into the Pensieve.

"Now, everyone who wants to, if you'll join hands, we'll go see what we can see."

Inside the Pensieve, everything took on a smoky, dreamy look. They found themselves in one of the dungeons of Hogwarts, in what looked to be a potions lab. In the front of the lab, they saw a rather short man, with thick blonde hair and a mustache. With him was a rather good-looking boy talking to him.

"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away..."

"Sir, I wondered what you know about ... about Horcruxes?"

"Project for ..."

With that, the memory faded away, and they found themselves outside of the Pensieve once more.

Sirius came through on this one. "That was Professor Slughorn, wasn't it, Headmaster? I remember him - he thought Lily was one of his best students ever. He also had his Slug Club. He wanted me to be a member, until he found out I had been expelled from the family. He seemed good enough, though I never really liked the way he collected people who had connections."

"That's right, Sirius. That is indeed Horace. I will do my best to contact him, and see if he can give us the rest of that memory, as well as anything else he might be able to tell us."

While the rest of them discussed the possibilities, Dumbledore made his way to the floo to call Professor Slughorn. After a couple of moments, he returned. "Professor Slughorn is in the middle of creating a rather touchy potion, so he can't get here just yet. He'll come as soon as he can, probably late sometime Monday."

Harry looked up. "OK, what can we do now? If nothing else, I suspect my wife would like to dive back into the Black Family Library, in search of more information. I suspect she figures that Professor Dumbledore would know of anything in the Hogwarts Library that might apply. Not much else we can do until we hear back from the Department of Mysteries, or Professor Slughorn."

"You know me too well, my love. Let's go hit the books. Anyone coming with?"

"We'll catch up with you later, Harry, Hermione. We're going to go back to the Burrow and make sure Ginny gets some rest. That experience with the locket certainly didn't sound good!"

Meanwhile, deep within the Ministry, in the Department of Mysteries, Harry's inquiry was working its way through. The need for the information was quickly verified, and the head of the department had a folder prepared with the easily-gathered information they already had. This was sent on up to the Minister's office, while a notice was sent out to the researchers to put this on top of their priority list in researching.

One of the researchers saw the note, and a different plan of action came to mind. He remembered the defeat of Lord Voldemort. And he realized that if Lord Voldemort had made a horcrux, and he could bring the Dark Lord back to life, he would be well rewarded. A little research, in notes he didn't give the head of the department to send up to the Minister, and he had a lead on a possibility.

Nigel Darinius had long served the Dark Lord from within the Department of Mysteries. He was one of a number of the Dark Lord's unmarked servants, due to the risks of being caught in the Department. Slightly less trusted because of this, he was still often far more useful than many of the marked Death Eaters. And he wanted that trust and respect from the Dark Lord, and he believed he finally had a shot at it.

Nigel was a careful sort, so he didn't immediately leave. Instead, he did a normal day's work, before checking out and leaving for home. Once home, he carefully spent a couple of hours sitting, reading, doing nothing. Once he felt sure that anyone watching would have left, believing him to be in his normal pattern, and not going anywhere until the morning, he went into an inner room, and apparated out to a place he remembered both from meetings, and from the file.

Riddle Manor looked much as it had some three years before, when his Master had first been resurrected. As he was unmarked, he was also not expected to have been at that first meeting, and he wasn't. However, he had shortly been called in to re-affirm his loyalty to his Dark Master, and he had, most willingly. Darinius was one of the few Death Eaters who knew much about his Master's history, who even suspected that he was in fact a half-blood. It didn't matter to him.

What did matter to him, this night, was the possibility that Lord Voldemort had hidden his horcrux here, or some kind of clue to what and where it was. His first step was a short survey of the building, looking for places where a hidden room or compartment might be. While doing so, he kept an eye out for any artifacts that might have made suitable horcrux containers. As he would find a likely object, he would cast a detection spell on it, but so far he had had no luck.

After his first pass through, he started on his second pass, this time examining areas where he's spotted possible hiding places in his first pass. Carefully, he cast searching and revealing charms, and he found quite a few items of significant evil, or value, or small caches of money. He was three-quarters of the way through his second pass when he actually found it.

"It" was a large ring, of what appeared to be gold, with a black stone engraved with a family crest. It didn't seem to radiate any feeling of menace or dark magic, but Darinius' detection spells first confirmed that it was deeply evil magic, and secondly, that it was in fact a horcrux. Looking it over, he decided the easiest way to keep track of it was in fact simply to wear it. It was far too important to take any risk of losing.


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, I've got two chapters of this story under way, and next chapter will be the first of the fun ones. I hope everyone is enjoying the story. Oh, and once again: Not mine, JKR's. And Kinsfire's. I'm just dogpaddling in their wading pool._

* * *

Willoughby Williamson Weatherby, the Third, stepped through the front door of his new Manor house. It had cost him a significant amount to buy the place at the Ministry Auction, but he just knew it would open doors for him in Wizarding Society. It had taken the Ministry Aurors three months to bring down the dark magic wards protecting the house; fortunately, he had not had to pay for those. However, he did have to hire and pay for the Goblin team to reset the familial wards that were not dark magic to accept him as the new owner. That had cost him a third as much buying the manor had originally. 

It really hadn't cost him as much as he had expected though. It was, after all, previously the Malfoy Manor. Malfoy's reputation, as well as the rumors that Lord Voldemort had occasionally used this house for revels and for a headquarters, had combined to drive the price down somewhat. Willoughby wondered if he would find any dark artifacts hidden within the house. Supposedly, the Aurors had done a thorough search, but it was almost expected that there might well be a few places that only the owner of the house could find.

He clapped his hands twice. A small pop-eyed house elf appeared by his side. "Yes sir, Master Sir? How may Bibbly serve you, Sir?"

"Bibbly, I'm planning on making this my new primary residence. While I tour it, I want you with me making notes on any cleaning and repair work that needs doing. You and Toaloo will be splitting your time between this house and my old one, which will serve as my city house and retreat. I don't care much how the two of you split things up, as long as one of you is around when I need you. Now, come along, and let me know if you find anything important."

"Yes sir, Master Sir! Bibbly will make sure both Bibbly and Toaloo are giving you as good service as ever!"

As they walked through the house, Weatherby occasionally made some comment about some change he wanted made. Bibbly occasionally made notes of his own, muttering about bad elves not keeping the house properly even after the Master had gone away. At one point, they came across a large dining room with a hole blasted in the floor. Inside the hole, they found stairs leading downwards.

Weatherby mused to himself. "This must be the room they found that huge cache of dark artifacts in. The Prophet didn't list what all was found, but judging by the size of this room, it must have been a lot of stuff! Bibbly, I think this room would make a good wine cellar. See to it!"

"Yes sir, Master Sir! Bibbly will make sure of it!

As Weatherby walked around the room, he noticed the barest edge of something shining in the light, but the rest of the item was completely hidden in the shadows under some shelves. Reaching down, he felt around under the shelves and found a pair of gold goblets. "Nice worksmanship, heavy enough to be real gold. And they even have my old House emblem on them. Bibbly, let's go back upstairs for now, and have a spot of brandy. I'm thirsty!"

"Good idea, Master Sir! I just pop back to your old home, and get a bottle for you, Master Sir!"

Weatherby walked back up the stairs, and sat down at one of the tables. He looked the goblets over very carefully, and decided he wasn't going to sell them. They looked much too expensive to waste that way; they were obviously very old, and he decided he might even be able to pass them off as relics of Helga Hufflepuff herself!

Bibbly popped back into the dining room. "Here is your favorites brandy, Master Sir!"

Weatherby took the bottle, and after blowing the dust out of one of the goblets, poured himself a generous splash. He looked at it, wistfully, and said "To success." He then took a few sips. As he took his last sips, he throught he heard, distantly, someone casting the killing curse. But it didn't matter to him, because he was lost in blackness.

* * *

As Monday morning dawned bright and early, Harry woke up curled around his favorite bedwarmer. As he carefully extricated himself from her arms, he heard the shift in breathing that meant he hadn't managed to avoid waking her up this day. "Are you going to want to go in with me, love, or do you want me to floo you when Professor Slughorn gets in?" 

He felt her shift, and start to get up. "I'll come in with you, darling. That way, we can share the shower this morning!" Harry laughed, and watched as his wife slid off her side of the bed and strolled nude into the shower. He finally stood and followed her.

Forty-five minutes later, after they had managed to clean each other, mess each other up, and clean each other again, before finally exhibiting amazing self-control in not getting each other messy once more, they made their way to the kitchen. There, Harry got out the frying pans, and quickly made a fairly standard breakfast. "Honey, frankly, I'm scared of what Professor Slughorn is going to tell us."

"Why, Harry?"

"This whole thing of horcruxes scares me, just to start with. And I'm sure you noticed Professor Dumbledore wasn't thrilled with the idea that there might be more than one of them. If I had to guess, I would say that he'd thought of the possibility of Voldemort making one, but not several. I think it scared him to think that Voldemort might have gone that far."

"I see what you mean. We'll definitely have to wait and see Professor Slughorn has to show us, though. Hopefully, it won't be as bad as say that Voldemort has created a horcrux every time he has committed a murder."

"Oh, Merlin forbid! That would probably make things impossible! Still, we need to find these things before someone gets hurt. The power I felt coming off of the locket, once Ginny put it on, was incredible. I'm afraid that at the minimum, some dark wizard could find one and learn how to extract the knowledge Voldemort had from one, or add the power from it to himself."

"You've thought of something worse than that?" Hermione asked with furrowed brow.

"Indeed. What if somehow Voldemort himself came back because someone tried to use one?"

The look of horror on Hermione's face said enough.

Harry finished cooking breakfast, and they ate fairly quickly, neither feeling much like talking after that. Together, holding hands, they floo'd into Harry's office.

Harry stepped to the door, and poked his head out. "Violet, I'm in." Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a bit of movement. Turning, he saw an older, balding man. It took him a second to recognize the older Mr. Slughorn from the much younger image in the Pensieve. "Professor Slughorn! I'm glad to see you! Please, come in! Violet, would you let Professor Dumbledore, Bill Weasley, Remus, and Sirius know that Mr. Slughorn is here? My wife is already here with me."

"Certainly, Minister!"

Harry escorted Slughorn into his office. "Thank you for coming, Professor Slughorn."

"Please call me Horace, Minister. It is an honor to meet such a distinguished gentleman as yourself! I don't know quite why you called me in, but I'm always willing to do my best to serve the Ministry!"

"Thank you, Horace, and my name is Harry. I asked you to come in, in regards to a student of yours from quite a while back. But we need to wait for the rest of the people to get here."

As Harry said that, the fire in his office fireplace turned green, and out stepped the four gentlemen that Harry had asked his secretary to call. "Professor Slughorn, I believe you know Professor Dumbledore, and you might remember Mr. Lupin and Mr. Black from classes at Hogwarts. I believe Mr. Weasley here attended after you left."

"I do, I do remember Mr. Black and Mr. Lupin, and their little group, the Marauders. It's been some time, Albus, hasn't it? And good to meet you, Mr. Weasley!"

"OK, everyone. Now, Horace, here's the situation. I don't know how much you know about the Chamber of Secrets incident in my second year. We tried to keep a number of things quiet about it. One of those things was that the Chamber was opened by a student who was controlled by a diary made by one Tom Marvolo Riddle. Eventually, this diary forced her into the Chamber, and started to steal her life-force to bring Mr. Riddle back to life. Fortunately, with the aid of Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, I managed to stop the diary.

"Over the weekend, that same student came into contact with another artifact. She started screaming, and when the artifact was removed from her, she told us that it tried to invade her mind, much like the diary had. Looking over her memories of the invasion, we found this."

Harry tapped the side of the Pensieve, and the fragment of the memory of the conversation between Riddle and Slughorn played. "We need to know the rest of that conversation. Would you be willing to try to bring it up and let us watch it?"

Slughorn had gone pale. "Horcruxes. Nasty business. I think I can let you see that memory." He got a look of concentration for a moment, thinking back, then he placed his wand at his temple and withdrew the gleeming silvery strand of memory. Placing it into the Pensieve, he tapped the side.

Together, they watched a short conversation between Riddle and Slughorn, about how horrid horcruxes are, and how they would never be taught at Hogwarts. After the memory runs its course, though, Harry looks around. "Did anyone notice anything wrong there? There were a couple of places in the memory that looked... I don't know, blurry, I guess. They just didn't quite seem to fit right. Could a memory charm do something like that?"

"You are right, Minister." Dumbledore spoke up. "Horace, would you like me to try to break them with legilimency, or do you think you can break them from the inside now that you know they're there?" Harry detected a slight undercurrent in Dumbledore's voice, almost as though he were accusing Slughorn of something.

"That's quite alright, Albus." Slughorn said quickly. "I'm sure I can get them myself." He leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes, seeming to sink into himself. After a few minutes, he came back out of his trance. "I believe I have cleared the blockages. Shall we try this again?"

Once more, he concentrated, then pulled a memory out of his head. This time, it was obvious that the previous version of the memory had been highly editted, and that this time, it was quite a bit worse. The conversation quickly got into the question of whether or not someone could make multiple horcruxes, and the possibilities of having seven pieces of the soul. The shared revulsion at the idea was apparent on everyone's faces.

Once done with that memory, everyone thanked Professor Slughorn for coming in, and sharing that memory with them. After he left, Sirius turned to Albus. "So, Professor. I presume from your tone of voice that you think Slughorn _obliviate_'d himself to hide that conversation?"

"As much as I like and respect the man, I am aware of his faults as well. And I do suspect he might well have done that. However, I'm also fairly certain that he understood my challenge, and that we got all of that memory. He is a bit of a social climber, and I doubt he would want to risk your good opinion, Minister, any more than he would have to."

"Indeed. Well, whatever the reason, I think we found some very important facts out. Voldemort was indeed, even as far back as that, thinking about the possibility of multiple horcruxes. Specifically, seven of them."

Remus interrupted. "No, six horcruxes, I think. He himself would be the seventh, to complete the magical number. We can be fairly sure that he did want to use seven as the number though, for it has long been associated with the soul and with the heavens."

"OK, six of these things running around, then. We know of two specifically - the diary, and the locket. At least, we think we do. I'm still waiting for that deeper report from the Department of Mysteries. Professor, Moony, Hermione - have any of you learned anything more about these horcruxes, or horcruxes in general?"

Dumbledore spoke up. "I do know a little. I have confirmed that it is not simply a matter of committing a murder - there is actually a small ritual that must take place to create the horcrux. I cannot, however, actually find anything about the specifics of the ritual. Nothing I have been able to find suggests any long-range way of detecting horcruxes, though there is confirmation that there is a spell to check a specific item. That spell is supposed to be known to the Department of Mysteries, since they would normally be the ones to be dealing with these."

Just about then, there was a quiet knock on the office door. "Come in!" Harry said.

Violet stuck her head in. "Minister, there's an Unspeakable out here, who says he needs to brief you?"

"Send him in, Violet. Please."

"Good morning, Minister. I am Agent Odin, head of the Department of Mysteries. When your request for information came in, you caused quite a stir. We don't often get requests for information on horcruxes, and we had thought Voldemort was a closed case."

"I fear he is not quite. We recently found an artifact, currently being held in a very secure location, that appears to be an active horcrux for Voldemort. In addition, we have come to believe that the diary that played a part in Chamber of Secrets incident - I suspect your Department got a full report on that - was also one."

Agent Odin gasped. "Multiple horcruxes for one person? Sweet Circe! There's nothing in our records to indicate anyone has ever done that before! This confirms that something else I must inform you about is probably very important. Saturday evening, after your request for information came in, one of our analysts left as normal to go home. This morning, when he did not show up as normal, a team went to his house to check on his situation. They found he was not there. Checks showed that he apparated out of his home about two hours after he got there. The destination of the apparition was fairly fuzzy after so long, but Little Hangleton would be within the range of likeliest destinations. His emergency alert had not been set off, and in fact was found at his home.

"Therefore, Sir, since you have a team behind you that you know and trust very well, I'm going to suggest that you use your team to investigate this, and only ask us for informational support. In the mean time, I will be doing another round of security checks, and I think the questions under veritaserum will be a bit more intrusive. I'm going to leave this folder with you. It has everything we know about horcruxes, including the only spell known to specifically check for them. We know of no way to safely destroy them, nor do we know of any way to find them from afar. You already have all of the information we have about Riddle himself, at least as far as I know. I will be having someone go over my agent's files to see if he might have concealed something."

"Very well, Agent Odin. I am taking your suggestion, that we be the ones to investigate this. However, if your Department sees anything that might relate to this, get it to me immediately. For the time being, we are going to refer to this as the Enigma Matter. As soon as this episode is cleared up, we will be sure to give your Department everything we have found out about horcruxes and what Voldemort did with them. When all is said and done, we probably need to review the wording of the oaths your department takes, looking for loopholes. We probably should get a couple of lawyers with experience in the muggle world to look at them as well. I swear they can prove that black is white, sometimes!"

"That would be a good idea, Sir. I will almost certainly be hiring some of the recent muggle-born graduates to help us. It is starting to become obvious that the muggles are not what we have always thought about them."

Agent Odin left. Harry looked at everyone. "Shall we adjourn to the safe house to check things out?" Everyone agreed. "Violet, I'm going to be out for about an hour and half. My next appointment is the Working Witches for Wardrobe Equality at 13:00, right?"

"Yes sir! I've got things under control here, Sir. See you when you get back."

As the group floo'd away, Hermione asked Harry "Working Witches for Wardrobe Equality? What in the world is that about?"

"Apparently, they feel discriminated against that men can walk around topless, and women can't. While I can sympathize with their point, I'm not sure what they expect me to do about it!"

Hermoine looked at Harry with narrowed eyes. "I'll just **bet** you can sympathize with their point!"

"Your turn at the floo, love." As the fire started taking her, after she had given her destination, Harry gave her a good solid swat on her bum.

When Harry arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place, he had to laugh. He had just barely been able to keep his balance, which was a bit better than normal for him, but Hermione was sprawled on the floor looking very put out with him. "Did you trip, my love, coming out?" He smirked at her.

"You will pay for that, Harry James Potter!" The group laughed at her tone of indignation.

Dumbledore led the way into the Master's Study, where a place had been cleared on the desk for the locket. Reaching into his pockets, he pulled out the remains of the diary. "Did you want to cast the detection spell, Harry, or should I?"

"I was thinking we should all cast the spell against the locket, which we know for certain is an active horcrux. Then we can cast it against the diary, and see what it can tell us about destroyed ones. Perhaps even cast it in the boiler room, and see if they leave any residue behind when they're stored somewhere."

"That sounds like a good plan, Harry." Dumbledore started things off, by casting the spell on the locket. "_Animus Moneo!_" His wandtip swept out a quick spiral inwards until it pointed at the locket. The locket glowed a blazing red, the glow arching upwards from the top.

Next was Harry. "_Animus Moneo!_" A similar spiral this time, however, the blazing red glow from the locket arched upwards, and this time formed a face - the face of Tom Riddle. Bill Weasley started in surprise. "I guess if you can put enough power behind it, the spell not only can tell you that it is a horcrux, but who it is a horcrux for! That's certainly useful!"

Remus laughed. "Not that useful, if Harry is the only one who can do it! You did notice that Professor Dumbledore's casting did not do that."

Bill replied. "Certainly, though I suspect Professor Dumbledore didn't try to put as much power into it. Plus, there are power-combining rituals that we use occasionally in ward-breaking that would help here. This is definitely an aspect of the spell, though, that probably should remain with the Department of Mysteries."

Dumbledore tossed his two cents worth in. "I did watch, and Harry did put more power into the spell. However, if I pushed a bit harder, I think I could match that. So it's not that over-powered a spell. I think everyone here could do it if they try hard enough. I don't advise it, though. It would likely leave you feeling very drained."

Everyone took their turn at casting the spell on the locket, though everyone else also took Dumbledore's advice, and didn't try to push for the identification level. After that, they turned their attention to the diary.

Casting the spell on the diary showed a washed-out red glow across the diary, except where the hole from the basilisk tooth had punctured it, which was not glowing in the least. Even Harry's more powerful version of the spell showed no signs of identification. They were satisfied that Voldemort's soul piece was gone from the diary.

Down in the basement, they checked the area where the locket had been found. A glow similar to that of the diary is found. Normal purification spells don't seem to work, until Harry gets annoyed and casts a Patronus at it. As the Patronus sweeps through the area, sure enough, the glow disappears. "Well, would you look at that? Add another use for the Patronus to your lesson plans, Remus!"

"Do you think it would work against the horcruxes themselves?" Remus asked.

Hermione speaks up. "I have no clue, Remus, and that bothers me. I think we should wait until we know a bit more, or have a couple to test on, to find out. It would be nice, I'm sure to be able to stand back and cast it at something even suspected of being a horcrux, but I doubt we're going to get that lucky. Remember, Patronuses don't normally do much to Dementors except to herd them away from people. The incident at the Final Battle was by far unprecidented, and quite likely involved at least some of that accidental magic that was leaking from Harry at the time. Let's wait at least until we can review what the Department of Mysteries has for us on horcruxes."

"Fair enough. Why don't we start on that, while Harry heads back to his office. I'm sure he needs to do some careful study of the issues before he is descended upon by the witches who want to go topless."

Harry laughed. "Oh, no! I don't want to risk the wrath of certain ladies!" Laughing, he floo'd back to his office, to get back to his job.

When Harry arrived home, he found Hermione, Remus, and Bill sitting around the table, papers spread out in front of them. "Have you three found anything yet?"

"No, nothing yet." They chorused. Hermoine looked up. "How did your meeting with the topless witches go?" She had a gleam in her eye.

"Well, fortunately, they did not show up topless. We discussed the issue. I expressed my sympathy for their plight. I explained that while I personally had no issues with it, that I couldn't simply pass the law by edict - that I was doing everything I could to distance myself from the Fudge Administration's way of doing things, and so I was bound by law to bring the issue up in front of the Wizengamut, and that it was very unlikely that I would manage to get it past those old fuddy-duddies. They found my use of the term fuddy-duddy very entertaining, and I suspect we may start hearing it more in the next couple of generations of kids going through Hogwarts. Over all, I think I survived. I was very glad to spend some time talking to Bagman about the possibility of starting a Quodpot league over here, after that!

"So, love, any idea what I'm making for dinner tonight?" Harry asked.

"I figured we could just do pizza. I called and placed an order about 20 minutes ago, so it should be just about ready for pick-up, if you'll pop out and get it."

"That should be perfect. After the fight for the rights of free-range breasts everywhere, I don't really feel like cooking!"

"Free-range breasts?" Remus and Bill cracked up over that.

"Yep."

Hermione looked like she couldn't decide whether to be insulted for the women, or to laugh at the thought. She finally decided to laugh at it. "Did you cast any _Finite_s at them, to see if they were enhanced for your viewing pleasure?"

"Oh, definitely not! I wasn't about to risk that! You know darned well that Kipling was right about More Deadly Than The Male!"

Harry popped out, and picked up the pizzas. When he returned, they all had a good evening. Together, they reviewed the notes they'd gotten from the Unspeakables. "The biggest thing, Harry, that I've been able to find is that Riddle was a bit of a magpie when he was at the orphanage" Hermione noted.

"Magpie?"

"Right. He collected things - most often, souveniers of his more important battles. He also seemed very interested in the history of the Founders of Hogwarts - most notably, of course, Salazar Slytherin. However, it's known he made approaches to collectors, and he may have obtained, one or more relics of the Founders. If so, we think he would have taken great pride in corrupting them by turning them into horcruxes. In support of this theory, we have the locket, which appears to be one owned by Salazar Slytherin. If so, we're looking for at least something owned by Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Godric Gryffindor. There's not many known relics out there, so we should be able to check on most of them fairly easily. However, counting the diary, that's only five items."

Remus looked up. "Perhaps he picked something from one or the other of his families? In a sense, he would already have something for his mother's side, since the Slytherin locket comes from that side. Maybe something from the Riddle family?"

"We'll have to investigate that. I can check on that, and just in case, on the Gaunt Family, through my contacts at Gringotts. I can use the excuse of them being one of the old pureblood families that's died out, and so we were thinking about looking at it as a test case for cleanly getting the money into the economy without disrupting things." Bill added his contribution to the pot.

"OK, that sounds like a bunch of good ideas. Let's see what we can do with that for now. Come Saturday, we'll get everyone together back at the old place, and see where we're at.

The rest of the evening passed in pleasant conversation, with the major topic being Hermione's upcoming job, and all of the offers she had gotten for it. Bill found one offer, while looking through the pile, that cracked him up. "Hermione, you know that you had best never show this offer to my brother!"

"Which one is that, Bill?"

"This one, to play for the Chudley Cannons! Ron got three offers from professional teams, but he was depressed that they didn't make him an offer. In fact, we thought for a while that he'd never play Quidditch again. We think he felt that if his favorite team didn't think he was good enough, then he couldn't possibly be good enought play Quidditch. I'm not sure what the girls had to do to get him out of it, but I suspect it might have something to do with why the trim in his house is painted orange. Oddly enough, two days later, an offer from the Cannons did come in, and how long do you think it took for him to reply?" Bill's laughter rang through the house.


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm sorry to lose at least one reader - however, this story is very likely to end up not involving sex. It just doesn't seem to need it. Most major sexual events in Harry's life seem to be covered in the original, and just having lemon scenes for the hell of it isn't what I've got planned for this story. I've got one cute trick I'm pulling - and the cat is completely out of the bag in this chapter, if you didn't pick up on it before - and sex isn't a needful part of it._

_However, I would like to say thanks to all of my readers and reviewers. Even if they're not going to continue reading._

* * *

The first attack occurred in Barrow In Furness, a little place just south of the Lake District National Forest. Just what had occurred was difficult to tell, though the results were obvious. The Ministry obliviators had a rough time finding everyone who had seen the Dark Mark glimmering in the straits between Barrow In Furness and Walney Island, where the sole bridge had been collapsed. In addition, fires raged through the warehouse district. Each fire would not have been difficult to fight, though they had been ignited in fairly separated spots, except that they weren't seen until they had merged into one large conflagration.

The report on the incident landed on Harry's desk. Harry looked it over, frowning. About halfway through his reading, a head poked into his floo. "Minister! A team of Aurors has just been dispatched to another Dark Mark sighting - this time in Pontypridd, down near Cairphilly. Not a huge attack, but there was a wizard there who said they saw Voldemort!"

Harry fought the urge to leap up and apparate to the scene himself. Even if Voldemort had been there, he was certainly long gone now. Being the head honcho, a husband, and a father sure had its down sides. He couldn't just jump out there and join the battle any more.

"But being a husband and a father has a lot of upsides, doesn't it, my love?" Harry heard his wife's voice purr in his head.

"Hi, my love. Yes, lots of up sides. And a nice backside. And ins and outs." He knew she could hear the smirk on his face as he thought about one of the nicest backsides he'd ever seen, and the ins and outs that went with it.

"Indeed, my little boytoy. What has you so antsy?"

"A couple of reports of attacks at which the Dark Mark was reported. The second one included a sighting of Voldemort. And, I'm most likely going to get pelted with requests for a statement, and I'm not really sure what to say. We don't know what happened yet, but I'm not going to be like Fudge and keep claiming that there's nothing to worry about. Since we found that damn horcrux, I know it's definitely possible that Voldemort is once again out there, but how likely is it, really? But if I even mention the possibility that he is out there, every wizard and witch in Great Britain is going to be panicking."

Hermione gave him many suggestions about what he could tell people, and some suggestions about how he might help people. He decided he would hold that press conference. To prepare for it, he spent the next hour working on his speech, and contacting various departments about the practicality of some of Hermione's suggestions. He was relieved to find out they weren't extremely impractical.

The Auror teams returned from the investigations. As it happened, Kingsley Shacklebolt had been leading the team that investigated the attack in Pontypridd. "Good afternoon, Minister. I have the reports on today's attacks."

"Come on in, Auror Shacklebolt. What can you tell me?"

Shacklebolt walked into the office, and closed the door behind him.

"The attack was fairly well planned, in both cases, but each was the work of but one individual. Wand signatures don't match up with anyone that we can identify, but we're still working on that. Damage was fairly extensive, but definitely not something one strong wizard couldn't pull off by himself. Over all, we're evaluating these two attacks as more or less announcements of existence - kind of a claim of 'we're back', and maybe recruiting calls. It's really hard to be sure."

"Sounds good to me, Kingsley. I'm planning to do a press conference later this afternoon. Anything in particular you think I should cover in it? Anything you want me to avoid?"

"Nothing really, Minister. Play it down, I would guess, until we can get a better handle on what's really going on. But by all means, don't lie! Merlin knows we don't need another situation like Fudge got us into."

"Believe me, I know. I plan to tell them that we don't know what's going on. That we hope to find out soon, and that they should take a few extra precautions, and call us as soon as possible. I think I'm going to offer to have the Department of Magical Transportation make emergency portkeys for people to use, tied into an alert so that when one goes off, we can send an Auror team to where they left from, and an Auror to where they went to to interview them for information on why they left. Probably send the Auror first to ask them what happened, in case of false alarms. But, of course, if we see a large group go off at once - well, I'm sure your squad leaders can figure out what to do about that."

"You know, that really makes a lot of sense. One going off is quite possibly a false alarm. 50 or 100 going off from Diagon Alley means something is going down. Where are you going to have the emergency portkeys take them?"

"I figured we could have it take them somewhere of their choosing. That way, we don't have unwounded portkeying into St. Mungos in the middle of a major attack, or as a easy way for a team of Death Eaters to appear in the middle of the Ministry. Oh, I'm also planning to set up each Auror with a set of pouches that will contain pre-set portkeys - one that will contain portkeys for St. Mungos, one that will contain portkeys for Ministry holding cells for prisoners, and one with portkeys for a sanctuary location. Since we got rid of the Dementors on Azkaban Island, I'm thinking a holding area there, guarded by goblins, might work. We can make it reasonably comfortable, until someone can come and debrief them and take them home."

"I really like that idea, Minister! It won't help if whoever is doing this puts up portkey wards, but they usually don't, since it's so hard to do. Gets the wounded to help, the prisoners to secured lock-up, and the innocents out of the way."

"Exactly. And I'm going to talk to the Weasley Twins about the possibility of bombs that will take down an anti-portkey ward. Those two are some of the most creative wizards I've ever seen, and if they can cause as much trouble for normal people, imagine if we let them take off some of the kid gloves on the stuff aimed at evil wizards. OK, talk to your people. See if they can come up with a better place than Azkaban for a sanctuary. I know I really don't like the idea of doing it there. I don't want to use Hogwarts, either. See what your people come up with. Ask them for ideas for things the Weasley Twins could work on to make their jobs easier, too. In fact, we should consider making our own research and development department for building and testing things. Nothing as heavy-duty as what the Unspeakables handles, more along the lines of innovative ways to use things we already have.

"Alright, I think we've covered enough here. I'm going to finish going over this speech. I have one appointment with the Wobbly Wizards beforehand, who want to talk to me about truth in packaging, and I have no clue what that could mean. And I'm not really sure I want to know!"

Shacklebolt left the Minister's office to have a talk with the head of the DMLE about what they had discussed. He certainly didn't want to be around when a group of gay wizards came by to talk about packages!

Shortly after one in the afternoon, Harry left his desk, his lunch mostly uneaten as it had come right after his meeting with the Wobbly Wizards. The nature of their issue had left him somewhat shaken, and not really in the mood for food. He thought to himself "After that, the press can't be too bad!"

Harry stepped up to the podium in the Ministry press room. Looking out over the reporters he had come to recognize over the last couple of years, he smiled to himself about the fact that Rita Skeeter was no longer there. The tough stand he'd taken on all forms of the press being able to back up their stories about specific people had quite simply put her out of business. _The Quibbler_ had become a much more respectable paper, though the articles about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, and Rotfang Conspiracies stayed. The subscribers had come to enjoy the quirkiness, and it was fairly simple to distinguish the real stories from the in-jokes.

Harry cast the _Sonorus_ spell on himself. "Thank you, everyone, for coming this afternoon. Late last night, and early this morning, two attacks were carried out by evil wizards. At the second one, this morning, a wizard gave us a description of someone that looked somewhat like Voldemort.

"We are going to take this threat seriously. Our best guess, right now, is that it is someone either using polyjuice or a glamour spell to look like Voldemort, trying to use his reputation as a path to power. I will not deny the possibility that Voldemort used some kind of ancient magic, though, to come back to life once more. I will **pull** a Fudge on you. For now, we suggest that you simply be more cautious, and if something starts to happen, get away fast. To help in escaping, I am going to order that the Department of Magical Transportation, and an Aurors on duty, will make some small item of each family member into a portkey to be used in the case of an attack. Please note that these portkeys will be tied into an alarm at Auror Headquarters, and that an Auror will be dispatched to the destination of these portkeys as soon as possible to find out what any Aurors going into the attack might be found, so jokes will not be found funny.

"In addition, if anyone happens to have any old spellbooks that might have mention of some of the kinds of magic that could help Voldemort come back, we ask that you bring them in to the Ministry of Magic, and ask for an Unspeakable to turn it over to. If possible, the books will be returned, though if the magic they contain is too dark, we will attempt to replace the book with one or more books of light magic of equal value. If you fear actually being seen giving it to an Unspeakable, cast a shrinking spell on it, and send it via owl to the Department of Mysteries, and your wand signature will be used to identify you and return it or replace it very discretely.

"Even if Voldemort has not returned, we would like to get these books. It is not likely that Voldemort will be the last Dark Lord, so any help to prevent them in the future will be greatly appreciated.

"At this time, I've told you everything that I actually know about these attacks. As soon as I find out anything solid, I will call another press conference. Please don't pester the Aurors for information, because they don't know much themselves, and I expect them to rather busy trying to find out things for us. Thank you, and have a good afternoon!"

Harry watched as the reporters left to file their reports. He expected one or two of the less reputable ones to put out some version of "Voldemort Is Back!", but he'd noted which of the reporters were using VerbataScribe quills. If needed, he'd contact them for verbatim transcripts of his speech. After all, the one that his VerbataScribe quill had been making on the table beside him could have been tampered with.

Harry headed back to his office, making a quick stop by to visit Arthur and Percy in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department. He wanted to get their ideas on the possibility of a Muggle Artifact Adaptation office, to possibly bring in things the muggles used all the time, like biros and notebook paper. He knew it might turn into a battle with the purebloods, but some things just really were better in the muggle world!

* * *

Lord Voldemort sat on the throne he had transfigured out of a chair. "Thank you, gentlemen, for coming. As you can see, I have indeed conquered death. I am once more among you. And together, we **WILL** wipe this world clean of muggle scum! Step forth, and become my new Death Eaters!

"As soon as I am finished providing you with my Mark, you will be apparating to Normanton South, where we will destroy everything we can. However, I want **no one** harmed. All of the muggles must be left stunned, and left with nothing to go back to. Clear the buildings of everyone before you reduce them to splinters. I want to leave the Ministry with an almost impossible job!"

"Erickson! Step forward!"

"Fitzjames! Step forward!"

"Fitzroger! Step forward!"

One by one, the new Death Eaters stepped forward, and with the excruciating pain of it freshly impressed in their mind, they apparated to that night's target, to begin their reign of terror.

* * *

"Tonight, my Death Eaters, we announce my return to the world! We will take this portkey to the heart of Normanton North. There, we will disillusion and silence ourselves, and very quietly, we will kill every person we come across. I want them all dead of the Killing Curse, preferably with no sign of struggle. And when you see my Mark rise once more in the sky, you will apparate away, to return to your homes to await my call once more!"

The five meter section of rope that Voldemort had made into a portkey carried them all off to a small park at the south edge of Normanton North. From there, they each immediately went into stealth mode, and spread out. Working their way slowly up each block, they entered the houses with very quiet _alohamora_s, then quietly cast the killing spell on each inhabitant.

Finally, the entire town had been depopulated, leaving behind nothing but unexplained corpses. Finally, when they had all finished their work, they left, leaving behind one sole monster by the name of Lord Voldemort. He pointed his wand into the sky, and cast his signature spell _Mosmordre!_ high into the sky, before apparating away to his headquarters. If he had just looked over his shoulder, he would have seen an identical Mark, rising over Normanton South.

* * *

Harry sighed to himself. The previous week had started off badly, with those two attacks nearly all the way across England from each other. But then the week had settled down. No real progress was being made, but a few families had taken the offers of portkeys for safety, and manufacture of the portkey pouches for the Aurors had started. This week, so far had been nice, but as he'd looked the previous evening at his calendar for today, Thursday, something nagged at him. An appointment for the Daughters of Freya had been listed, and something about that struck a chord in the back of his mind.

It annoyed Harry when he couldn't remember something like that. The link that bound him and Hermione together didn't fade with distance, but it was a bit harder to use it for regular conversation over distance. Besides, the two of them had come to recognize that they needed some privacy, and over the last couple of years, they had settled into a habit of not using the link for talking nearly as much as they had at first. So, Harry decided not to bother Hermione for something as minor as who Freya might be.

Something had woken Harry early that morning, and not being able to go back to sleep, he'd gotten up and gotten ready for the day. By the time Hermione was waking up, he was nearly ready to go. He kissed her good morning, and explained that something was nagging him, so he'd decided to go into work a good two hours early.

Just about the time an owl flew into his office to deliver the Daily Prophet, he heard a knock on the door. He yelled a greeting, and an invitation to enter, as he picked up the paper. He barely noticed that it was his Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones, coming in, because the headlines of the paper caught his attention.

The headline read "DARK MARK RISES AGAIN!"

"Should I presume you're here about this headline in the Prophet, Director Bones?"

"I am, Minister. The attacks carried out last night were horrifying. In Normanton South, there was great destruction. On the other hand, Normanton North suffered almost complete casualties. In fact, as far as we can tell, the only way anyone was attacked in Normanton North was by the Killing Curse. Even that would not be as certain, if we didn't have a witness.

"Approximately 22:12 last night, the alert board for the emergency escape portkeys lit up. As it was only one, the on-duty officer believed it was most likely a false alarm, or someone playing a prank. He assigned one of the on-duty Aurors to investigate it, but took his time about it. I will be having a discussion with that officer after this meeting about his future in this department."

"Don't go to hard on him. I'll admit that I didn't even think we'd see any of them needed yet, and I even planted the idea of false alarms in my speech when I announced the things. Still, we are going to have to take them seriously.

"You say there was only one?"

"Yes, Minister. The two communities hit are primarily muggle. In fact, the family of the young girl who escaped is the only known Wizarding family in either community. As per our established procedure, only the one wizard was sent to interview the person who used the portkey. He took his time, and it took about 15 minutes before he got around to apparating to her location. When he got there, he found a young female, approximately 9 years of age. The only words he could get out of her were 'the green spell'.

"I will give the Auror credit for this. As soon as he heard those words, he gathered the girl in his arms and apparated back to the Auror offices. He told three of the other Aurors there that the girl had seen the Killing Curse used, and sent them to investigate. He stayed behind to try to comfort the girl, and finish out the interview. A Healer from St. Mungo's was called to give the girl an examination. No signs of injury were found, but they're treating the girl for the shock at this point. I've got the transcript of the Auror's interview with the girl here."

Director Bones handed Harry a piece of parchment. On it, he read how the girl had seen her mother and father talking in the living room, and how she was still up even though she was supposed to be asleep already. She didn't see or hear anything, but all of a sudden, there was a green light out of nowhere that struck her mom, then her dad, and they had jerked like they had been hit. She cried as she told how her mom and dad had just gotten her this new necklace just a week ago, and how they had told her that if something really bad happened, to grab it and yell "SAFETY" as loud as she could. The last thing she'd seen, as the portkey took hold, was a green light coming at her.

"I'm glad those portkeys saved at least one life. Where did it take her?"

"Her aunt's house, in Leeds. Her aunt and uncle had gone out for the night. They've agreed to take the young girl in once St. Mungo's releases her."

"OK. Good. What is your read on the situation?"

"When the investigating Aurors reached the scene, they saw two separate Dark Marks, one over Normanton North, the other over Normanton South. One went back for re-inforcements, the other two split up to survey things. Once backup arrived, both villages were thoroughly searched, and the repair squads and obliviators started their way through Normanton South. It's a rather massive job, as there were a couple of thousand people in that village. They were expecting to finish up shortly after I came in to report to you.

"I think we have the potential for a major problem. I've assigned Auror Shacklebolt as the lead investigator on these two incidents, as well as the two that occurred early last week. He suspects there might be two coordinated groups of left-over Voldemort sympathizers out there. At some point, there will likely be a power struggle between them, but until then, he thinks we're going to see more simultaneous strikes like these."

"Right. That sounds likely to me, too. I think we need to set up some kind of focused group specifically dedicated to these strikes. Auror Shacklebolt would be a good head for it. He'll report to you daily on anything they find; you'll report to me only if they find anything significant."

"I suspect, Minister, you might get a call from the Prime Minister about this. The plan was to make it look like a cell of terrorists of some new group was making a poison gas, and it blew up on them, to try to account for both the destruction in Normanton South, and the deaths and lack of destruction in Normanton North."

"OK, Director. That sounds good. Now, in addition to the group tasked strictly to chasing these people down, I think we might need to do a bit more. Why don't we consider bringing in some of the reserves to help with regular patrols and stationings, and bring in all of the reserves for refresher courses, as well as running the regulars through the same refreshers.

"We also need to re-think our standard operating procedures on the response to emergency portkey use. For the duration of this situation, I think we need to have the interviewing Auror go out, as we expected, but we also need to go ahead and send a three-Auror team straight to the departure point prepared to go hot. As well, we need to go ahead and quit thinking in terms of false alarms, and assume any usage is real and treat it that way right now. We'll have reaction teams specifically designated, and they'll wait in the monitoring room with the operator. As soon as they leave, the operator will alert the ready room to stand by.

"Keep an ear out, too. I'm still a bit worried about that person last week who thought they saw Voldemort himself. We really need to find out what is going on there as soon as possible.

"Now, I think I've taken up enough of your time, Amelia, and I fear I have a few things I must get done before the Daughters of Freya descend on me."

Amelia laughed. "Aren't they the ones pushing for classes about fertility rites at Hogwarts?"

Harry looked at Amelia in dismay. "Is that what they're pushing? Oh, well, I guess Sex Ed classes are likely to be more popular than Professor Binn's History of Magic class. As long as they're not pushing for demonstrations, I think I could be behind it."

"They are. Enjoy your afternoon, Minister!"

Harry groaned. Two years of the Granger Family ways had not quite yet completely burned out his embarrassment circuits. "I should have remembered that Freya was the Norse Goddess of fertility," he thought to himself. "Why did I take this job again? Oh, yeah. My saving people thing, and this time it's trying to save the Magical world from itself. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

Harry thought a minute, over whether he should hold a press conference on this matter. Waving his wand, he cracked open his door. "Violet, would you contact the press and let them know I'm going to hold a conference this afternoon after my meeting with the Daughters of Freya. Give me a thirty minute window after that meeting before the press conference starts. And ask my press ad visor to come in so we can discuss what I'm going to say."

Harry didn't really like the idea of needing a press ad visor, at least not the way Fudge had used one, which was mostly as a matter of figuring out how to say what he didn't mean. So, he had started using his press ad visor mostly as a sounding board, to see if he was actually conveying what he wanted to. They discussed a few things here and there, with Harry having to put his foot down about the phrasing to avoid slipping into the kind of half-truth/half-lie that had so long characterized Ministry press releases. The press adviser was a hold-over from Fudge's administration, and Harry was starting to think he would have to find a reason to replace the man.

Done with the discussion with his press adviser, Harry looked over paperwork, approving a request by Hagrid to allow a visit by a couple of dragons for his Care of Magical Creatures class. He absently wondered if Norbert would be one of the dragons brought, and if so, if Norbert would remember Hagrid. Harry rather expected so, since he found Hagrid so memorable! Magical beasts on the scale of a dragon required actual approval by the Minister, and not just authorization by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Harry remembered from his Care of Magical Creatures class. Other paperwork flew by, until his meeting with the Daughters of Freya. Immediately after that, he ate a quick lunch while reviewing his rough notes for the press conference.

The time for the press conference came, and feeling like a convicted felon headed for the chopping block, Harry went to the press room. "Ladies, Gentlemen of the Press. Thank you for coming.

"At this time, there's not much I can really add to the information given out last week. I can confirm that most of the facts reported this morning in the various newspaper articles were reasonably accurate. I can also add one more piece of bittersweet news. One person did escape the slaughter in Normanton North. No, I will not be releasing his or her name; it was a child, and if his or her guardians feel it appropriate, they will make the name known and arrange for interviews. We here at the Ministry will only confirm or deny if someone makes a claim. Please do not try to guess the person. They need time to rest and recover from a horrible situation, one I can completely sympathize with, having lost my parents at a very early age.

"I can confirm that the escape came due to one of the emergency portkeys I authorized during the press conference last week. We are not completely satisfied with the response of the Aurors to the situation, but we're not certain they realistically could have done much better with what we knew at the time. Director Bones is reviewing the situation closely with the members of her department. At this time, we have a team headed by Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt specifically tasked to chasing this group or groups. We are also calling in reserve Aurors, and putting all Aurors and reserves through refresher training to be sure everyone is at the top of their game. I'm planning to put retired Auror Alastor Moody in charge of the refresher courses if he will accept. I expect the Aurors are going to be somewhat annoyed with me over this decision, and likely to be somewhat jumpy, especially if someone yells 'Constant Vigilance!'"

The crowd laughed, because Moody's little quirk was quite well known.

"That's all for this afternoon, gentlemen and ladies of the Press. I will leave you to distribute your information to your respective agencies. Oh, yes! I do ask that you try to encourage people to get the emergency portkeys as we've seen that they can be of service! I hope we won't really need them any more, but I can't lie to you and say that we'll have this wrapped up by supper time."

A voice was heard in the back of the crowd to yell "Constant!" The rest of the crowd instantly responded with "Vigilance!", and left, laughing to themselves a little.


	4. Chapter 4

_OK, originally I'd hoped to update this weekly. It doesn't look like that's going to happen, though - biweekly seems to be where its going. Still, I am going to keep plugging along, so I hope all of you will keep reading!_

_Well, I had hoped to have this up by last weekend, and was even considering cheating by claiming that Labor Day was part of the weekend. However, it was not to be. Looking at the average, I'm getting two weeks between chapters, which I can accept - though it's not the chapter a week I was hoping to do. However, the trend line doesn't look good. Still, this part of the story was in my notes as "Both Voldemorts start building powerbases, using the memories they carry up to the time of their creation, but have trouble since most were imprisoned after the first Voldemort's destruction. Each also starts carrying out initial demonstrations of power. Seeing reports of the other's attacks, they go hunting each other, while the Ministry group suspects what happened, and goes hunting themselves."_

_We'll see how it goes. After this, I'm back into stuff I plotted a bit more thoroughly. Lesson to self: You need to make notes even on minor characters!_

* * *

Hermione groaned with frustration. Books that even mentioned magics that affected the soul were few and far between. Books that contained anything substantial were rare within that group. The closest she'd found so far to what they needed was one book which mentioned a bit of the arithmancy behind the spell that the Ministry used to communicate with the Dementors. That had led her to study some of the research that had been done on the Dementors. She had started to get an outline of a spell that would actually allow the extraction of a soul taken in the first few minutes after a Kiss, but decided that she needed to put that to the side for the time being.

All of the evidence she could find suggested that the Dementors were the creation of a wizard who was quite advanced in his or her understanding of soul magic. However, nothing she could find gave any hints who that mysterious creator was. She also found herself studying previous Dark Lords who had come close to immortality, or made claims of immortality. Of the twenty-three she sorted out of the list, only four had used something that appeared to be a horcrux, or related to a horcrux, and of those four, no explanation of how the horcrux had been found and destroyed was recorded. She swore to herself that such would not happen again. The damn things were simply too dangerous.

The research into what Voldemort might have used as his horcruxes was also problematic. Hermione had come to the conclusion from her discussions with Headmaster Dumbledore that Tom Riddle was a bit of magpie, who liked to take trophies of his victories. It didn't seem too large of a leap to theorize that he would use these trophies as the holders of his horcruxes. However, very little was known of Voldemort's life once he left Hogwarts.

The diary didn't fit too well into the magpie theory, but it did tie into his own desire for immortality, and it was most likely the first one made. Hermione had studied the locket very closely, as well, and had finally determined that it was, in fact, commissioned by and made for Salazar Slytherin.

The only thing Dumbledore had been able to tell her about Riddle's life after graduation from Hogwarts was that he had worked at Borgin & Burkes for a time, and that he had come back at one point to ask for a job as the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher. Dumbledore, worrying about periods of time that Riddle would not account for in the past years, refused him the job. Riddle, leaving Hogwarts at the time, had cursed the position, and as DADA Professors came and went, none staying more than one full year, it became apparent the curse was actually in effect.

In investigating Riddle's time at Borgin & Burkes, she found mention of an incident where he had been sent to try to buy a pair of goblets said to have been Helga Hufflepuff's from a little old lady. However, after returning to report no success, Riddle had only worked a few more days, before disappearing. While he worked, rumors circulated that the little old lady, believed to be the last of the Hufflepuff line, had been killed by her house-elf.

Hermione found this circumstance to be extremely unlikely. Her experience with house-elves led her to look deeper into the circumstances, and she soon came to suspect that Riddle had in fact killed the woman, and done something to the house-elf to make it confess to the crime. This led her to the idea that perhaps Riddle had used heirlooms of the Founders as his horcruxes. At least it gave her another avenue of investigation to pursue.

Her studies turned up very few items that were known to have been possessions of the Founders. Gryffindor's Sword had become well known, after the Chamber of Secrets incident. Most thought the Sorting Hat had been Gryffindor's as well, but Hermione couldn't find anything to solidly confirm or debunk that theory. Hufflepuff's goblets were now on her list, with the note that it didn't really matter if they really were or not, as long as Riddle thought they were. She'd also identified the possibility of a drop-spindle that it was said Helga has used to make the magical cords that had been used to mark and lay out the dimensions of Hogwarts, and well as being used as the limiting markers for the wards protecting Hogwarts.

The locket had already been identified as belonging to Slytherin, but she'd found suggestions that Salazar had also left a staff that he'd used in certain rituals. Other sources said the staff had been burnt out in one of those rituals. She made a note that more research was definitely needed.

Of the Lady Ravenclaw, she found no information. It was rather amazing to her that the one Founder noted for her love of books, had so little information available about her. More investigation of that was needed, as well.

Hermione wondered what she was going to report the next day, at the meeting they'd been having each week.

* * *

Phillius and Andiron met each other in a little pub called the Broken Barrister, located about midway down Knockturn Alley. Each looked the other over, and decided that the other might well make a good recruit for their Master, the Dark Lord Voldemort.

An outside observer would have found the convolutions the conversation went through absolutely hilarious, as each danced around the topic of Voldemort and Death Eaters so carefully. Soon, though, they reached the crux of the matter. Time to move in for the kill.

"So, Phillius, have you ever thought about actually doing anything about these damned muggles and mudbloods taking over our world?"

"Funny you should ask, Andiron. I have thought about it. And a few days ago, I ran into someone that I really didn't expect to see. Mostly because, well, the Daily Prophet had been reporting him dead."

"You don't say."

"In fact, the other night, we had a good time killing muggles."

"Oh, excellent! Wait a minute? You killed muggles? You must have been on the Dark Lord's other team. Wasn't that a brilliant strategy to split us up and wreck such terror on them?"

"Other team? Oh, yeahhhh! That makes sense. A lot more sense than the idea that the Ministry has been floating, that some idiot would try to pretend to be our Master. Um. On the other hand... perhaps we're not supposed to know about each other?"

"Yeah, mentioning that we'd seen each other might be good for a Cruciatus or two. On the other hand, how about let's compare notes so we don't create more problems while we're recruiting. I was thinking about talking to Batesman over there next."

"Don't bother. What about Xathian over in the far corner?"

"He should be good. From what I've heard at the Ministry, he should be ripe for recruiting. Gileson over there?"

"Looks good to me. Wanna check back after we're done with them?"

"Sounds like a plan."

* * *

Lord Voldemort surveyed his assembled Death Eaters from his throne. "My Death Eaters. It has come to my attention that someone is out there carrying out attacks in my name, that I have not authorized. I want to know who they are. I want to stop them. After tonight's attack on Attadale, you will all do your best to find me information on this other group!"

* * *

The Aurors on duty at the Emergency Portkey Monitoring Board looked up, as a candy-cane striped light above the map started flashing and a loud klaxon started screaming. The primary operator looked closely at a marking on the board. "We have three Emergency Portkey activations in Attadale. Two from one family, one from another. Auror Thompson, go check out the two that belong to one family. They landed in Glasgow. Tomlinson, go check out the other - it landed in Liverpool. Scout Team One, both keys left Attadale. Go see what's happening there!"

Thompson apparated back to the Command Center about 10 minutes later. "It was no accidental triggering. The family reports that they're all out, but that there were at least a dozen Death Eaters that they saw mostly just blasting away. There's at least another dozen or so wizard families there, so I don't..."

Thompson's report was interrupted by the alarm once more springing to life. The operator looked things over carefully. "OK, we have a activation in Liatrie. We need a full strike team to Attadale, and one to Liatrie. Those two villages are about the closest ones to Hogsmeade and to Hogwarts. I'm sending out the scramble message to the rest of the forces. Someone go check with the end-point of that latest portkey - it went into Glasgow as well, and find out what you can!"

"Good call, Auror Smythe." A thumping sound was heard. "Reserve Auror Moody reporting for duty, and I'll take that last portkey. I'll be back very shortly. Continue bringing up the reserve forces, but keep some of them back in case we get an attack on Hogsmeade itself. In the mean time, **CONSTANT VIGILANCE!**" A loud crack was heard as Moody apparated away.

"Who does he think he is, taking charge like that?" one of the Aurors waiting to go to Attadale asked.

"That, my friend, was Retired Auror First Class Alastair Moody, probably one of the three greatest Aurors to hit the streets. He's rather paranoid, but considering he actually does have a lot of enemies, it's justified. Now, we're all ready - let's go." The team of a half-dozen Aurors grabbed the hubcap that had been hastily made into a portkey, and with a tap of the team leader's wand, they vanished to Attadale. Just seconds later, a second team of a half-dozen vanished with their similar portkey to Liatrie.

As soon as both teams arrived, they looked around, and saw their prey. Quick flicks of wands sent stunner spells flashing through the night at the Death Eaters. However, as the first few dropped, they disappeared.

"Shelby! Get an anti-portkey charm set up, and get on the two-way mirror with the Command Center to tell them to drop people just outside of it. It would be really nice to get a few prisoners!

As Shelby started chanting the first few syllables of the anti-portkey charm, a voice was heard echoing over the town. "Return to base, my Death Eaters! We're done for now!" The Dark Mark flew out of a wand, and started illuminating Attadale in a sickly green light.

Events followed almost exactly the same path in Liatrie, except that the anti-portkey caster finished the charm just as the last Death Eater activated his portkey. There was no way to tell for sure who the legs and hips belonged to, but it was not likely they would have to worry about the head and chest. What remained of the body looked like it had been ripped loose from the rest by brute force.

Moody apparated back into Command Center. "How are things going?"

The communications Auror looked up from his mirrors. "When the strike teams got there, the Death Eaters taken out by the first wave of stunners vanished as soon as they were stunned. We presume by portkeys. The Attadale team didn't manage to get an anti-portkey charm up in time to stop the rest from leaving, but the Liatrie team almost managed it. They've got the bottom half of one of the Death Eaters. We have Repair and Obliviation teams, as well as Forensic teams, dispatched to both sites, and Auror Shacklebolt reports he'll be in within 15 minutes to start the after-action review. Fortunately, it seems it was a quick scare strike tonight, as all of the known actions have been so far."

Shacklebolt walked into the Command Post. "Everyone who actually dispatched out tonight, I want you to meet up in the Dahlbert Room for the review in 20 minutes. You two on the panels, I've got replacements coming in to cover for you so you can be there as well."

As the scout and strike teams came back, they filed into the designated conference room. There, they made notations on notepads in front of the, and those notations were transferred to a map on the wall. Each showed where the Death Eaters they had seen were located, who they had fired at, and anything else they had noticed of import. The location of the Dark Mark above each village was already noted, but guesses as to where it had been launched from were annotated as well.

"Listen up, men! It looks like we did everything right tonight, so far, so I'm proud to see that. Auror McPherson, you were at the monitoring board. Start your report."

"Yes, Sir! At 21:17, we got the first signal of an Emergency Portkey usage. It was immediately followed by two more, so closely that distinguishing which was which was impossible. Two of the portkeys belonged to members of the Bainbridge family. The other portkey belonged to a wizard named Fredrick Preston. I dispatched Auror Thompson to Glasgow, and Auror Tomlinson to Liverpool to interview the escapees immediately. As well, I dispatched a scout team to Attadale perform the initial evaluation.

"Auror Thompson returned at 21:24, and was reporting when the alarms went off for the Emergency Portkey usage in Liatrie. Judging that two separate strikes were extremely unlikely to be accidents, I immediately dispatched full strike teams to both locations. As soon as I had done so, Reserve Auror Moody came in, and elected to investigate the second portkey to Glasgow. He ordered me to continue bringing up the reserves, but to keep most of them on hand in case of an attack on Hogsmeade. I'm not certain when Auror Moody returned, because by that time the strike teams had reported in, and were preparing to return."

Kingsley stood up. "Good report. Now, let's hear from the rest of you." As Shacklebolt pointed at people, they gave their report on just what they had seen and learned. After they had all given their comments, he sent them off to get checked very quickly by the medical staff, then to write up the appropriate parchment reports. Once that was done, he expected they'd be done with their shifts, so he told them to go home and get some sleep. He spent the rest of the night reviewing their reports, and the reports of the Repair and Obliviation squads, and the Forensic squads.

* * *

Harry walked into his office. "Good morning, Violet!"

"Good morning, Sir. Auror Shacklebolt will be here in about 10 minutes to brief you on last night's events."

"Thank you. Send him in as soon as he gets here." Harry walked to his desk, sighed, and looked down at his daily schedule. There it was. At 15:00, he was to meet with the wee witches and wizards about something. He started going over the paperwork waiting in his IN box, trying to get some of the simpler things out of the way quickly.

A light rapping on the door alerted him to Shacklebolt's presence. "Come in!"

"Sir, I have the reports on last night."

"I figured. Let's hear the news."

"Nothing much, once more. At about 21:30 last night, emergency portkeys going off alerted the Aurors to an attack in Attadale. Normal dispatch procedures took place until a second alarm arose in Liatrie. Both are small villages. The only thing of note about each is that they're two of the closest settlements to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. This, of course, made Auror Moody rather paranoid when he showed up."

"Like that's anything new. Go on."

"He really doesn't change, does he? When the second alarm went up, the dispatcher decided not to wait for the scout team, but to go ahead and send full strike forces out to each, and to call up the reserves. Moody told him to hold the reserves in case a third strike, possible at Hogsmeade itself, took place. A rather sensible precaution, I would think.

"When the teams got there, they immediately tried to stun as many Death Eaters as they could, but as soon as they were stunned, they were portkeyed away. The teams then started raising anti-portkey charms, but they were too late. The Liatrie team only managed to collect half of one Death Eater.

"As usual, the Forensic teams didn't find much, and the Repair and Obliviate teams got everything under control. Right now, the spell signature specialists are working over the new information they got. So far, they think they've identified 12 Death Eaters that seem to only work with one group, and 8 Death Eaters that only work with the other. Both groups have about two dozen wands that they swap around at random. That's a standard technique for making our work harder, since the spell signature is a combination of a wand signature, and a wizard's own personal signature. Since they tend to only use high-power spells not needing a lot of precision, they can get away with it.

"However, there are two signatures they can't quite figure out. One from each group. In these cases, they can't seem to separate it into a wand signature, and a wizard signature. They have no clue what's going on, but they're working hard on it. Signature splitting is delicate work, and it's a rare talent that's good at it. We have our best, though, working hard on it."

"That sounds good to me, Kingsley. I can't see anything else you could be doing. One thing crossed my mind, though, while you were reporting. Are anti-portkey charms a good idea, since they would prevent the emergency portkeys, and the Auror portkeys from working?"

"Actually, that is a concern. I'll have to see what we can do about that. Perhaps the Unspeakables could do some research, and see if they can come up with a spell to neutralize any portkeys on a perpetrator? Then we could hit them with that, then banish a portkey for the ministry holding cells onto them."

"Good idea. I'll schedule a meeting with them about it later. Maybe I can get that meeting with the wee wizards and witches postponed."

Kingsley laughed. "It seems like every time I come in here, you have some really strange meeting scheduled for the afternoon."

"I know. I've considered having you appoint someone else to keep me up to date, but with my luck, that won't do any good."

* * *

Harry and Hermione flooed into Grimmauld Place about 9:30 that Saturday morning. Meeting them was the Weasley clan, Dobby and Winky acting as babysitters for the children, Dumbledore, Remus and Tonks, Sirius, Hermione's parents, and Kingsley Shacklebolt. Harry had decided to let him in on the horcrux hunt as he was the lead investigator in the attacks that had been going on, and as it seemed to be Voldemort supports carrying out the attacks, it was hoped he might find clues to any horcruxes.

The first matter of the day was bringing Kingsley up to speed on the situation. They reviewed everything, including the discovery of the locket, remembering the diary, and what they had subsequently found out from Professor Slughorn. Then Hermione took over.

"Normally, when a horcrux is made, the dark wizard's soul is split in half, and a ritual we believe is used to place it into an item. The item being used to store the horcrux must be prepared ahead of time, with another ritual. Obviously, Voldemort modified the ritual when he prepared his.

"The basic arithmagical calculations on the class of ritual that has to be used is complicated, but with the help of Professor Vector and some of the Unspeakables, I was able to verify that under no circumstances could a soul be split into more than 7 pieces. We may presume that either Voldemort made the same discovery, or that he simply planned to use 7 pieces in the first place because of its magical power.

"This means that there are possibly 6 horcruxes out there, because one piece had to remain with his body. The soul-piece in a horcrux is essentially dormant until it is given a new body to take over. That is, in part, why Voldemort had to keep possessing bodies during his time in Albania, and why he possessed Quirrell. He had to stay active to be able to take over a new body. However, it's obvious he had his eye long ago on taking over Harry, both because Harry had defeated him the first time around, and because Harry, even in his first year, obviously had an enormous reserve of magical power.

"Now, two of those horcruxes are accounted for - the diary, which has been destroyed, and the locket, which we're holding for experimentation. Studying Tom Riddle's life, I've found that he liked to take trophies of his conquests; that's one of the reasons for his use of the Dark Mark. The first dark wizard in recorded history to use one, it is his way of saying 'this is my property'.

"My next step was to look for other things he might have used. His diary was one of his first, in fact I think it was his first. Studying the locket, though, I determined that it is in fact an heirloom of one of the Founders - no bonus points given for guessing which one. I then started looking for other possible Founder artifacts. I found two possibilities for the Lady Hufflepuff - a pair of goblets, and a drop-spindle that was used to make the magical cords used in many of the warding rituals around Hogwarts.

"As for Godric Gryffindor, we have the obvious Sword currently hanging in the Headmaster's office, and it's widely believed that the Sorting Hat originally belonged to Gryffindor, though I can find no real verification of that. They don't matter, anyway, as Professor Dumbledore has already checked them with the Horcrux Detection spell, and they're not horcruxes.

"There's one other possible artifact for Salazar Slytherin, a staff he is said to have used in a number of rituals. This staff may or may not still exist, some sources say it was burnt out in a ritual, others say it wasn't, and in both cases, nothing says it was completely destroyed. Most frustratingly, I can find no potential artifacts so far for the Lady Ravenclaw."

Harry stood up. "The Unspeakables have found nothing yet on any long-distance way to detect horcruxes. There's no consensus among the Unspeakables on whether or not the old Prophecy about me applies, nor have any new ones been identified. Frankly, until something changes, it looks like we're stuck. We can go on looking for those relics, but who knows when we'll find something."

"There is one lead, Harry, on one of the relics" Hermione said. "Shortly after leaving Hogwarts, Riddle took a job at Borgin & Burkes. There, he was assigned a job involving the goblets I mentioned as maybe belonging to Helga Hufflepuff. If so, he might have claimed she wouldn't sell them, then stolen them and covered up the theft by killing the woman who had them. I think that death and the possible theft needs to be investigated more carefully."

Shacklebolt looked up. "I'll get a small team looking into it. I can't shake too many people loose, because we're having to cope with these new attacks." Shacklebolt got a strange look on his face. "What happens when someone takes one of these horcruxes in hand? From the sound of the experience with Ginny, just touching them doesn't activate them."

Harry thought for a minute. "I know I didn't find anything special about the diary until I actually wrote in it. Ginny, is that how it worked for you?"

Ginny looked down at the table. "Yes. And then when I picked up that locket, it seemed to be OK until I very stupidly put it around my neck!"

"Hey, hey! You got careless. That's been known to happen to a few others of us. You do need to be more careful, but it's quite understandable! And I think your experience with the diary helped give you the strength to resist the locket when you put it on. The locket is almost certainly one of his later creations, so I suspect the soul piece in it is a good bit stronger than the one that was in the diary."

Harry continued "And what if you hadn't put it on, and we had just destroyed it? We wouldn't have known that there might be more of these out here, and Voldemort might rise once more!"

Shacklebolt got a stricken look on his face. "What if one of those horcruxes has been found, and someone has been taken over by Voldemort's soul?"

"That's a pretty big stretch. After all, these attacks started about the time we discovered the possibility of a horcrux. Two coming to light at the same time does stretch the bounds of coincidence." Professor Dumbledore chimed in as the eternal optimist.

Shacklebolt sighed softly. "Still..."

Harry looked at him. "I will admit it's a possibility, and one I'll ask the Unspeakables to see if there's some way to check on. I certainly hope that's not the case! The last thing we need is another Voldemort running around!"

Harry looked around. "Anyone got any new ideas how I can get the public in on this search without causing a major panic? The longer these things are out there, the more likely someone will find one and find some way to make use of it. Hermione, do you think we should bring some of the Hogwarts Professors in on the research end of this? Perhaps Professor Vector and Professor Glyph for their knowledge of arithmancy and runes?"

"Frankly, Harry, if we can come up with some way to make sure they keep things quiet, then yes, I could use the help on the spell research. Soul magic is something that is very seldom written about. I've been researching Dementors, as they seem to be embodiments of soul magic. I'd also like Professor Flitwick's help. As much as I like Professor McGonagall, I can't see a lot of use for transfiguration magic in this, so I reluctantly have to say she should be kept in the dark - unless you think we need to bring her in, Professor."

"She is the Deputy Headmistress, and I might be needed to help out from time to time on this research and in handling the traps Voldemort set up to protect his horcruxes. I don't doubt young Minister Potter couldn't simply over-power most of the traps, but at the same time, he is the Minister, and he might not be available to help out. I think those four should be sufficient, though."

"Another thought, Headmaster. Perhaps you could get us permission to visit the libraries at Durmstrang and Beaubatons?"

"I think I can do that, Hermione. Both are fairly careful about just where they are located, so you'll probably have to floo there from my office. I'll contact Madame Maxine and Headmaster Badinov to make those arrangements first thing Monday.

"Thanks, Professor. I know their libraries aren't as extensive as Hogwart's, but they may have a few tomes that we haven't seen before. At this point, I'm getting pretty desperate."

Ron, who had been fairly quiet so far, spoke up. "I think we all are."


	5. Chapter 5

_Not mine, JKRs - and Kinsfire's._

_Over four weeks, this time, but I think I'm over a major hurdle. I'm going to modify my ambitions though, scaling back to planning on once every two weeks, rather than every week for posting. Also, this chapter is somewhat shorter than the previous ones - again, something I hope to fix, unless I get overwhelming urging in reviews for shorter chapters._

* * *

Lord Voldemort was not pleased. For 3 weeks, he'd been carrying out random raids across the length and breadth of Great Britain, striking terror in the souls of the Wizarding community. And for 3 weeks, he'd been sharing the front page of the Daily Prophet with some upstart group.

Worse yet, these attacks seemed almost coordinated with his. He'd tried everything to figure out what was going on. He'd tried a round of invading his Death Eaters' minds, followed by some judicious torture on the ones who felt a bit wavering, and still had found nothing. Studying the records of his previous downfalls had suggested that one young brat named Harry Potter had been instrumental in it. He really didn't know what to make of that, because he couldn't quite figure out why he had attacked the child.

The reports were informative, but not complete. Most critically for his purposes was mention of a bond, based in a curse scar on the forehead of the Potter child, that sometimes leaked information. But Voldemort couldn't figure out why the current Minister of Magic would possibly be leading a group pretending to be Death Eaters!

There was another missing piece of the puzzle. Why hadn't the Ministry admitted that it was really him behind the attacks? Well, there would be no denying it this day! His attack on Diagon Alley would ensure that!

* * *

A combination of factors had changed the defensive status of Diagon Alley over the two years since Voldemort had been defeated. One of those factors was remarks Harry had made, somewhat intemperately, about a bunch of fully-educated wizards who couldn't handle Death Eaters they outnumbered 10 to 1. To their shame, the DA's aid in defending Hogwarts reinforced this point. Gringotts had also raised insurance rates on all business owners who didn't show yearly proficiency in basic cursing. The testing wasn't anything like what an Auror was expected to be held to. It was more a matter of having to hide behind a small barrier and cast a few basic curses at a silhouette on the wall. Hitting the silhouette less than 50 percent of the time was considered failing, and the Goblins weren't afraid to make comments in the hearing of other shopkeepers about their inability to use their wand.

Though there had been grumbling about it starting up earlier in the summer, the strikes by what appeared to be Death Eaters had shut that up, and wards and shields had been strengthened all along the Alley. Wizards could be seen after hours practicing against targets in their back rooms, and a friendly dueling tournament had even been set up. And that's where the first strike against Diagon Alley ran into trouble.

Lord Voldemort and the two dozen Death Eaters he'd gathered over the past weeks all apparated into Diagon Alley about a half-hour before sun-down. His orders were simple. Torture, kill, and destroy! Those orders were simple enough that if Crabbe and Goyle had been in his team, even they could follow those orders.

In accordance with those orders, as soon as the Death Eaters hit the ground, crimson beams of Reductor Curses, bile red beams of Cruciatus Curses, and the unique verdant glow of the Killing Curse flew in a shower of energies. However, the cracks of mass apparition had caused the shopkeepers to look out their windows, and as soon as they saw the characteristic robes and masks of Death Eaters, they immediately fell to the ground, behind their counters. This meant that only a couple of customers walking between shops fell, nobody certain if they were dead or just knocked out.

The customers in the shops that had not been knocked back by explosions from Reductor Curses all started crawling into back rooms, where they hoped to find a floo or a back door they could escape through. The shopkeepers however, immediately responded with a storm of curses of all different types. The return barrage of spells was far more colorful than the initial one.

One lucky shopkeeper's slicing curse managed to find a Death Eater's throat. Another curse blew a leg off of one of the minions. Several more were simply stunned for a moment, or knocked down, and took a couple of moments to recover.

Meanwhile, a couple of the families trapped in the shops had found no way out, either floo or back door, and elected to use their emergency portkeys. The criticality of the location, as well as the magical energy monitors showing a flare of spell use in Diagon Alley, resulted in the immediate dispatch of a dozen Aurors. As they apparated in, they were just in time to duck the second barrage of spells from the Death Eaters. Their response, much better than that of the shopkeepers as a result of more training, resulted in a half-dozen more Death Eaters down.

As Lord Voldemort watched his forces evaporate, he cast his sigil into the air, and yelled for his men to grab one of their casualties and portkey away. Spells from the Aurors kept a couple of the downed attackers from being recovered. Very quickly, there was no more enemies present.

The Aurors called for help, to take the prisoners to the medical ward in the Ministry holding cells. Other healers from St. Mungos apparated in to treat those hurt by curses, or by falling debris. Very soon, shopkeepers were uttering spells to repair the damage done by the various spells.

Repairs were practically complete. The sun had gone down a hour previously, and there were just a few Aurors left in Diagon Alley taking the last couple of witness statements. Everything was nearly back to normal.

Said normality was to be broken, though. Cracks of apparition resounded down the walls of the storefronts. The reaction to this attack was distinctly different from the first attack. Auror's heads whipped around to the source of the sounds. Wands whipped up instantly.

As messages of black cloaks and white masks sped down optic nerves, messages of wand flicks and incantations were dispatched to the appropriate places in Auror bodies. The Death Eaters initial flurry of spells was met with a flurry in return, the storekeepers only instants behind the Aurors. This time, a half-dozen Death Eaters were downed in the very first instants.

Lord Voldemort's voice rang out "We've been betrayed! Retreat!"

The second wave attack on Diagon Alley did very little damage, and almost no casualties. The prisoners were quickly rounded up and taken in for questioning. The only thing of note to come from the interviews is that none of the Death Eaters in the first wave knew anything about the Death Eaters in the second wave, and vice-versa. The Aurors doing the questioning admired the operation security this exhibited.

* * *

Harry floo'd into his office the next morning. One look at his calendar brought a bit of fear to his heart. At 14:25, he had a meeting with the Cross-Species Liaison Alliance, and something about that name made him worry a bit. Sure enough, Auror Shacklebolt was right outside the door, waiting to report.

Harry looked at him. "I knew I would be seeing you as soon as I saw the appointment for the Cross-Species Liaison Alliance on my schedule. What happened?"

"Attack on Diagon Alley last night. Two, in fact. Interrogation of the prisoners, though, shows that neither group knew of the other. The Aurors who conducted the interviews think this shows extraordinary discipline in keeping the two groups separate, and something we've unraveled about the wand signatures suggests that's true, but then there's the reports that when Lord Voldemort saw the Aurors in the second attack, he cried out that they had been betrayed. I don't quite know what to make of this."

Harry looked over at him. "What did you find out about those mystery wand signatures? Perhaps that will shed some light on things."

"One of the forensic wand specialists remembered something from the files. Apparently, there was a case about 150 years ago of a Wizard possessing another Wizard, and forcing him to go on a rampage. At the time, the study of wand signatures were much less advanced, so they pulled the records. Looking them over, they saw many of the same anomalies that we've been seeing in the spells cast by Lord Voldemort.

"Taking this clue, they looked at the mystery traces more carefully, and discovered that in the case of possession, there are **three** signatures mixed together: that of the wand, the wizard holding it, and the wizard possessing the other wizard. Doing that with the current batch, we've sorted out two different wands, two possessed wizards... And Lord Voldemort possessing both. Needless to say, we're in no hurry to announce this to the public. Can you imagine the panic the idea that Voldemort could possess two different people at once could cause?

"We actually think he's switching between them, using one to control one group of Death Eaters, and the other to control the second set of them."

Harry sat thinking for a moment. "That certainly seems like a good possibility. I'm not sure how he would be keeping control of the bodies while he wasn't possessing them. I'll have someone look into that. What were the summary results of the two clashes?"

"Well, the shopkeepers performed very well in the first wave of attacks. One death from the Killing Curse, a half-dozen injured by other curses, a half-dozen injured from falling pieces of the buildings. Four Death Eaters captured and taken into custody, one Death Eater killed by a knife banished into his heart. In the second wave, nobody killed, one shopkeeper hurt by debris. Six Death Eaters captured, none killed as far as we can tell. We hurt them last night; not as much as we'd liked to have, but we did hurt them. Oh, one other good points. Neither attack managed to get the time to launch the Dark Mark."

"Good. That's what I'll go with in my press conference this afternoon. I'm going to keep quiet about the possession thing. That is very worrisome, and I want to think about it some more. Anything else?"

"One last thing. For now, we're behind on the implementation of your idea of providing Aurors with pre-made portkeys to the holding cells, St. Mungos, and a safe hold. The Department of Magical Transportation is still busy, though not nearly as flooded as they were, with the family escape portkeys. I've thought about having my Aurors making them, but the risk of a bad apple sabotaging them, as well as the fact that Magical Transportation has the charmed equipment to make them in mass, makes me not really wanting to do that. I think we're doing OK as we are, so I want to wait a bit more in implementing that idea. It's a great one, but not one we can do safely just yet."

"Agreed. Let's hold off on that one until things settle a bit. Very well. Now I have to get back to my regular stuff, at least until that very weird appointment this afternoon."

"Better you than me, Sir. I am broad-minded enough to handle mixed-species couples, but ... I'm in no hurry to hunt them up and make friends, either!"

"Why was I afraid that was what they were all about? Oh, well, I'm sure I'll survive this meeting, just like I've survived all the rest so far!"

* * *

Lord Voldemort sat on his throne, considering the events of the previous night. He'd lost four of his men, and he really didn't have them to spare. Of more concern, though, was the fact that the shopkeepers had not fled in terror. Instead, if he was honest to himself, they had reacted quite well, probably better than his Death Eaters.

This was actually of the greatest concern to him. If people didn't fear him, his fight would be much, much harder. He was going to have to ratchet up the pressure. A smile crossed his face as he came up with a good target. And while he prepared the plans for his next strike, he had a couple of rituals scheduled to help boost his power some more.

* * *

Lord Voldemort considered the possibilities. Last night, they'd apparated into Diagon Alley, just as planned, and there seemed to be Aurors almost waiting for them. However, as he'd told no one of his plans, there couldn't have actually been an ambush. His first reaction, that they had been betrayed, was wrong. However, he would find one of his more useless Death Eaters to punish. He couldn't kill the poor sod; losing six of his men to the Aurors had hurt a lot. And it wasn't just the Aurors. The shopkeepers had attacked as well.

It struck him that perhaps he'd simply been unlucky. There'd been those other attacks, timed almost perfectly to match his, strikes very near where he'd struck. Perhaps he'd simply been unlucky, and the gang of upstarts had struck Diagon Alley just before he had. It didn't matter. He was going to have to be far more ruthless and terrifying.

The perfect opportunity came to mind. The Summer Solstice was normally a happy time. He would turn it into a night of terror.

* * *

Over the years, a gap had grown between the pureblood and mixedblood factions. The most obvious sign of this had become the seasonal celebrations: the Summer Solstice, the Autumnal Equinox, the Winter Solstice, and the Vernal Equinox. These were much less important holidays, magically, but still quite important culturally. The two celebrations had split off as families that became less strict in their pureblood views had started being left off of the invitation list for the original celebration. Families like the Weasleys were just considered too common to attend.

Those who had enjoyed the party started arranging their own, being much more open to who could attend. As a result, it was generally a much larger, much friendlier event, where much of the maneuvering for political power that went on in the original party was left behind. This year, plans had even been made for some of the other magical races to attend, as something of ambassadors for their races. However, no real trouble was expected, so there were only a half-dozen Aurors patrolling the perimeter, despite the expected presence of the Minister of Magic.

Harry and Hermione had spent several hours getting ready for the party with great care. Well, actually, Harry had spent the usual male span of about an hour, Hermione had spent the usual female span of about 5 1/2 hours. The normal male costume for these events was formal dress robes that would not look that out of place in a muggle event of similar nature. Black and white, their purpose was to highlight the display that the female put on.

Meanwhile, Hermione was taking great care to build up that display. She knew that while the man's purpose was to highlight the woman's beauty, the woman's beauty was meant to establish how valuable a prize the man had captured, thereby emphasizing how strong and powerful he was. And as Harry was **HER** man, besides being amazingly strong and powerful, she was intent on showing the rest of the Wizarding World just how wonderful he really was.

Her dress was of extremely simple lines. Close examination would reveal that it had no seams, that it was one pure piece of fabric, almost as though it had been created with pure magic, as it had been. And it would take a certain amount of magic to get her into it. In addition, still more magic would be required to make sure she did not pop out of it, nor did she show off anything to anyone she didn't want to.

The most amazing thing about the dress was its color, or actually, its colors. Simply to look at it, it seemed to be silver. But as soon as she moved, it would show flashes of sharp, pure color shimmering over her body, like rainbows caressing her. Two slits rising high up the sides would occasionally expose the side of her thighs, though a small charm ensured that only Harry would ever be able to find out that this one piece of fabric was the sum total of what she was wearing. Similarly, light sticking charms held the bodice of the robe in place, so that the fabric could drape down her ribs, and ride very low across her back. It was because of the way the back draped that she could not wear knickers with this dress, no matter how brief they were, but it was because she could not wear knickers or bra with it that she selected it in the first place.

Hermione had noticed that Harry seemed to like longer hair (at least, on the head, anyway), so she had allowed hers to grow out some, until it came down midway between her shoulder blades. She'd found that the weight of it pulled much of the bushiness out of it, but it was the feel of Harry running his fingers through it, and hearing his purrs of contentment as he brushed it out for her that ensured she kept it. She didn't realize it, but it had come to shine a deep bronze color, that made it look as though she had molten bronze flowing from her scalp, making a waterfall down her back.

Her ablutions done, she slightly enlarged the dress with a small engorgement charm, sliding it onto her body, then a quick cancellation of the spell left her encased in it perfectly. With a little help, it could be removed easily, but since she had wanted to surprise Harry with it, she'd had to take this route to donning it. Then came the makeup. She'd spent hours with Ginny and Lavender discussing just exactly what shades to do, and how to best apply them, and she was not about to accept anything less than perfect, removing sections and redoing them a half-dozen times until it all came together into a perfectly invisible but massive enhancement to her appearance.

She knew she was going to hit Harry hard, but she was completely unable to truly see how wonderful a job she'd done. So, when she stepped into the living room, ready to apparate to the receiving area for the party, she heard Harry take a breath, and she waited. And she waited. And she looked at him, worried since he hadn't said anything, nor had she heard him breath out.

This movement was just enough to break the spell, at least break it enough that he could find something to say. "My Love, I do not believe I would survive, should you become any more beautiful. You are simply incredible, and I am honored to be your companion tonight."

"Thank you, My Love. Shall we go?"

"Certainly, My Love." Harry took her arm, and with a minor twitch of power, impossible to tell from which of them it was drawn, he apparated them to the reception hall.

If it had been the more formal affair occurring at one of the pureblood families' mansion, he would have been expected to wait a few moments while he was announced, an announcement that would have take more than five full minutes, with all of his titles and awards that had to be recited. As it was, he and Hermione simply pushed open the doors and walked into the ballroom, filled with a delightful rush of noise composed of quiet conversation, and music drifting over from an area designated for dancing.

Harry led Hermione gently over to the bar, where they picked up small glasses of champagne to sip while they circulated, doing a slow survey of the room to find out who all had finally showed up. Along the way, they came across Remus and Tonks, dancing together, Tonks' hair matching the pink of her dress perfectly, to the point where you could not tell where the hair falling down her back overlapped the back of her dress. Ron was there, accompanied by Luna it seemed, but as the night progressed, they would see Ron dancing as much with the Patil twins, with no sign of jealousy from Luna - which was only to be expected, since nobody but Ron, Padma, and Parvati had ever managed to learn to read Luna. Nobody was certain just what was going on there, but all could tell something was. Nobody was taking bets, though, with Luna involved, on just what that something was.

Soon they came across the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall (though they kept insisting that the young couple call them Albus and Minerva) dancing together. They passed a few words, then continued on, giggling to themselves discussing whether there was anything going on between the couple, and whether they really wanted to know if there was. Eventually, they made their circuit of the ballroom, and Harry invited Hermione out onto the dance floor.

They'd had time for two dances, and were into the third song, when the sounds of explosions overrode the sound of the orchestra. Harry ran to a window, to find two glowing Dark Marks in view. A second later, a popping sound beside him had him turning, his wand out and ready, to find an Auror beside him.

"Minister! Just a couple of minutes ago, two groups of Death Eaters appeared on the lawn, about fifty feet apart. Each launched an initial round of spells at the building, but then noticed the other group, and turned on them. Each groups appears to have a Lord Voldemort leading them!"

"Has the on-duty strike team been called in yet?" Harry asked.

"Yes, Sir, however, they apparated in out of sight, and the leader suggested that they hold off while the two groups attack each other, and then take out the weakened winner."

"Good plan. I'm going to go out and see this, though I will stay back. My wife would kill me if I let my 'saving people thing' get the best of me when this is what you lot get paid for."

"Thank you, Sir. I was not looking forward to having to try to stun you."

As Harry and Hermione watched from a safe distance, the battle raged, with Dark Arts curses flying in a show of epic proportions. Very soon, the battle quieted down, though, except for a small knot in the middle where the two men who looked so much like Lord Voldemort faced each other down. There, the spellwork flying back and forth had grown much brighter, as curse after curse flew back and forth.

Soon, there was a flare of light, and one of the Lord Voldemorts fell. From the fallen one's body, a pulsing, sickly green orb arose, trailing a golden orb of shining light. These two globes quickly were absorbed into the body of the Lord Voldemort still standing.

"Retreat, my Death Eaters! I will call you when I am ready, and you **WILL** come! Something wonderful has happened tonight, something that will guarantee our victory!" With that, Lord Voldemort flashed away. The rest of the Death Eaters did so as well, leaving a dozen bodies, either wounded or dead, behind.

Harry stood looking over the scene. "Somehow, that doesn't strike me as a good thing."

Hermione stood beside him. "No, I didn't like the looks of that either. I need to do some research, but I think we could be in trouble."

* * *

Lord Voldemort, now the only Lord Voldemort, sat considering what he had learned. He had thought the other Lord Voldemort was an impostor, a traitor trying to use his reputation to build a new following. Instead, he had discovered that just as he had arisen from a horcrux, so to had the other. And when he'd destroyed the other's body, it had drawn the soul-piece to himself, and he suspected the other body's magical core as well. He'd have to do some testing, but if he could reabsorb other soul-pieces, and their magical cores as well, then if he could re-create himself into horcruxes, he would have a route to unimaginable power - power enough to go beyond immortality, to true Godhood!

Now, he needed to find the rest of his horcruxes, and perhaps re-embody them. He could use a couple of his Death Eaters as test subjects. He himself had come from the cups of Helga Hufflepuff, and the other had arisen from the Gaunt Ring, a reminder of a family he had turned his back on, and destroyed, leaving himself the sole Heir of Salazar Slytherin. Now, he needed to find his diary, that locket that had once belonged to Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four, the Sword of Gryffindor, and Rowena Ravenclaw's wand. Four missing pieces, and then he would start his reign of terror all over, at a whole new level!

The problem for him at this point was simple. He had left the diary with Lucius Malfoy, and he had not left the Cups. However, when he'd explored Malfoy Mansion, he hadn't found the diary. Investigation would be needed to find out what happened to it. Ravenclaw's wand was at the Ministry, well protected, and he really didn't want them to start exploring why he was interested in recovering it, so he'd save that piece for last.

He'd never managed to locate the Sword of Gryffindor before, so investigation was needed there, too. However, he knew exactly where Slytherin's locket was, and therefore, that was the piece he would go after next.


End file.
